Individuals here on hacker news tend to gravitate towards blog posts about games rather than links to actual games, generally. Not a hard fast rule, but it's what I've observed over the years.
I have had some success on Hacker News with similar games before[1]! But I'll certainly do a proper writeup of the tech behind this one because I think it's pretty neat.
As I get older, I find I'm often more interested in reading about things than trying the thing myself. I often go straight to the comments about articles rather than even reading them.
Hacker News or lobste.rs is my primary site for new content. But I've added blogs I've found particularly well written or informative to my feed reader (currently commafeed, formerly freshrss).
If you're looking for a way to browse the "independent" web there are a few projects out there like Kagi Small Web which curate sites for you.
https://blog.kagi.com/small-web
Buying and maintaining your own equipment is a good learning experience in itself. But universities generally don't like it when you host things on their networks, so that should be considered as well.