About M3A Labs

M3A Labs is a one-person independent studio based in Italy. It builds small things with care: a browser game you can start in one second, an Android app that answers one question well. No venture money, no growth team - one developer, evenings and weekends, and a Raspberry Pi humming in a cupboard.

What we make

Vortex Shift - a free neon arcade roguelite for desktop and mobile browsers. You fly a ship around concentric orbits, switching rings to collect gems and dodge mines; every cleared level lets you draft an upgrade, bosses guard the way and a final one waits at the end. It has accounts, global leaderboards, a daily challenge, missions and achievements. Read about it or play now; the guides explain every rule.

I'm Earning - a salary tracker for Android: set your pay, track your working time and watch what you have earned add up while you work. Available on Google Play.

How this site runs

Everything on m3a-labs.com is self-hosted on a Raspberry Pi 5 at home, reached through a Cloudflare Tunnel so that no port is ever opened on the router. The game server is a single Node.js process with a SQLite database; the pages you are reading are static files served by nginx. It is a deliberately small stack, chosen so that one person can understand, secure and maintain all of it - and it costs about the price of a coffee per month in electricity.

Principles

Free, and honest about how. The game is supported by in-game ads you can see coming; nothing is sold for real money.
Privacy by default. Nothing loads from third parties until you say so, accounts can be deleted in one tap, and analytics data is thrown away after 90 days. Each project has its own plain-language privacy policy.
Fair play. Scores are validated on the server, so the leaderboards mean something.
Small screens matter. Everything is tested on low-end phones and tablets, not just a gaming PC.

Get in touch

Bug reports, ideas, a screenshot of a run you are proud of - all welcome at [email protected], or see the contact page.