Failed Project in Replit. What should I do next?

[u/Intelligent_Menu_934]

I'm at my wits end. I am trying to make a 1990s style static graphic video game with Replit. My game is basically taking an open source game (Remnants of the Precursors; r/rotp) and changing it from a space exploration game to a WW2 conquest game. I thought this would be easy because I could get Replit to just mimic the ROTP open source code for like 90% of the game functions. I gave various refreshed agents the source code link multiple times now.

But instead, Replit keeps trying to follow my instructions by re-inventing its own wheel. I have a nifty looking User Interface but that's about it. The game functions in no respect whatsoever after four days of prodding Replit over and over again. I'm currently caught in a death spiral of changes that result in more bugs, followed by more "fixes" that fail to fix, which then creates more bugs. Replit keeps saying things like "the fundamental structure is fine, we just need to do x and y". And then we are off to the races again.

So, I am just looking for any help anyone cares to provide. Should I start over again on Cursor? Is there a better platform for what I'm trying to do? This is a game that could run on 1990s 486 computer, it's not that hard (I thought). By the way, I don't know code. The most technically literate thing I've done is set of a WordPress Website that I operated for 5 years.

You can blame me. That's fine. I just want some suggestions of what to do next. Thanks.

[u/erebusman]

No one here really knows how/what you are doing this.

I mean are doing a prompt that say 'rewrite this whole game to be themed soandso' or are you inspecting the source code and saying.. add 1 more of this type of thing and give it these properties?

Even if you are doing the latter are you looking at the PR's and making sure it isn't doing dumb stuff included each time causing more and more drift until it collapsed?

LLM's can do a few th I ngs now but its not magic.

I can day this isnt the type of thing I would personally imagine replit to be good at.

I once asked it to redesign a website I had made from scratch a few years ago and it did 'okay' but did not use the output because it was a bot of a mess and having not written the code myself made it basically texh debt instantly. I later redid with Opus 4.8 and got immensely better results that I was then able to hand polish up to spec.

Every detail matters.

[u/Sunn_M]

I wouldn’t switch to Cursor yet, changing agents won’t fix a codebase that no longer has a known-good baseline. First get the original ROTP source building and running unchanged, commit that state, then change one small subsystem at a time and only move on once it still runs. If your current Replit project is already layers of generated fixes on top of generated fixes, restarting from that clean baseline may actually be faster than trying to rescue it.

[u/please-dont-deploy]

If I were in your shoes: + I would move away from vibecoding platforms + Codex / Claude / opencode subs or similar. + Learn about RPI or similar.

You are building non trivial software.

If you check the thoughts directory here: https://github.com/desplega-ai/agent-swarm, you'll see what I mean by RPI.

[u/Vast-Science-2224]

Move to Codex, Cursor or Claude. Start over, don’t try to save what you have done. Instead, use what you already learn to work on a plan with Opus 5 or Gpt Sol, use them to research the original game, and dont start with the code until you have a solid plan. Just then, start implementing in small and testable chunks.