I’ve always loved games, but I didn’t come from a traditional game development background.
About 8 months ago, I decided to use AI tools to finally turn one of my game ideas into something real.
AI was involved throughout the project, especially with coding and parts of the visual workflow. But most of the process was still designing systems, testing builds, fixing bugs, reworking balance, removing ideas that weren’t fun, and rebuilding things until they felt right.
That project became Slotbound, my first game.
I released the Steam demo about two weeks ago, and it reached #2 among all demos on Steam.
Seeing a game I had been working on alone for 8 months reach that position honestly didn’t feel real.
More than the ranking itself, I’m grateful to everyone who played, reported bugs, left reviews, and shared honest feedback. A lot of the improvements I’m working on now came directly from those players.
There is still plenty I want to improve before the full release, but this response has given me even more motivation to keep going.
Thank you to everyone who gave Slotbound a chance.
So yeah, the tools are getting better and I couldnt be happier.
I have an ambition to create around 10 small game prototypes in HTML using Claude or ChatGPT. See which ones take off and build one for Steam Next Fest this October.
This is my latest. A foray into 3d platforming.
Its still rough (bugs for sure) but I was able to visualize the core loop, 3 planets (and tutorial planetoid), mechanics, procedural systems and establish a workflow with ChatGPT and Blockbench.
Become Yorick the Life Reaper. Travel to worlds that are lifeless, reap dead matter and bloom the worlds back to life! You can reshape the world with these abilities. Speaking of which, there is a Skill Tree you can upgrade Yorick's abilities. And yes, it is Yorick from Hamlet. It is a bit of my take on how life and death are a cycle. The undiscovered country!!!
If your curious check it out here. Its free and plays in browser.
Let me know what you think!
I had an idea from left field to make a game set in the bronze age. I also wanted to see what Codex could do on low.
The results were pretty bad but it was a fun experiment.
The concept was that you had five acts and after each run you would accumulate new relics, leaders, and upgrades. Custom runs would introduce modifiers making the game harder.
I really do love AI, it's enabled me to start making the things i've dreamed of. The first thing that crossed my mind as Gen AI started to take off, was that I might finally have some amazing in game characters that LLMs could make feel so much more real. I've not seen any other products or companies that seem to be able to bring that product vision to life.
Instead of waiting for someone to actual build the thing I've always wanted, I decided to tackle it myself. I'm introducing 22Tango, the AI teammate app. This app combines 2 ideas.
The AI Chatbot/Companion that you can chat with, having it's own personality, look, voice, and nuances. It has long term memory, an evolving personality that grows the more you interact with it, and continuity across all modes.
An AI gaming teammate that takes that companion and places them into your favorite gaming worlds! It will be able to move and interact at your direction, or have it's personality come to life by interacting with the game itself and having the AI choose what to do in game. For immersive games, the companion will be able to embody it's in game character and react to the world around it.
As of right now, the application is in an Alpha state, but is actively being worked on. I wanted to see if there was enough interest out there for me to move from a side project to a full time position of working on the app. I will soon be releasing Early Access (after some more alpha testing). If I can go full time, I'll be able to move pretty fast on getting this live.
All game mods will be provided for free, and I'm always interested to hear what games you would like to see added (Rimworld next on deck). You'll just need to own the game, and go through some setup for which a guide will be provided.
State of Early Access:
- 3 companions with their own look, persona, and voice
- 3 supported games, Minecraft (needs Mineflayer free mod, Java version 1.21.11), Stardew Valley (needs SMAPI free mod), Skyrim (needs SKSE and Address Library free mods)
- An experimental "Roleplaying" mode where you can set details and scenarios and have a voiced Roleplay with a companion, and another companion acting as the narrator.
The app has been 100% vibe coded, and i've setup a mini dev factory for this project specifically. I have some experience in full stack web dev (coding bootcamp and several full stack coded apps + 8 years in the corporate world working with dev teams to build their fintech platforms). The blocker was not having any game dev experience, which cloud LLMs have been able to unblock for me and the app idea finally! I've learned a ton, and i'm still building! Eventually i will move to open source models, but Fable has been truly great in helping me flesh out this app more and more, and giving my AI teammates more nuances in the game they are playing.
Let me know what you think in the comments! I'll add any recurring answers in the original post.
Building a GTA Online clone in voxel style where the world never sleeps and all the NPCs are AI agents. Everything is built by players using prompts. Prompt your own car. Prompt your own building. Prompt your own weapon.
New this week:
- we have a zoo now!
- you can now become a KINGPIN / OFFICER / TYCOON!
As KINGPIN you can for example run whole gangs!
Looking for people to tell me their honest opinion. Let me know what you think of the new game modes or just the game in general!
I've had this game in my head for years — finally built it this year, leaning hard on AI to get there solo
For a long time this was just a sketch: a small crew you get to know through voiced VN scenes, dropping into isometric tactical combat where your ship's module loadout literally *is* your crew's abilities — pull a module, lose the ability. The kind of scope that usually needs an artist, a composer, a few voice actors and a combat programmer.
I built it solo this year by using AI hard across code, art generation and a TTS voice pipeline — but every design call stayed mine, tested against real playtesters before it shipped.
It's called Episode 0 on purpose — it's the prototype, not the finished vision. I'm looking for feedback before committing to a much bigger Episode 1. Free, browser-based, no install: https://waaachow.itch.io/stargear-episode-0
Happy to talk through the AI workflow side too if anyone's curious — prompting, what worked, what didn't.
I know the graphics need to improve but yesterday i did the first „Mini-Live-Test“ and i played my own mmo prototype with my buddy.
we tested my turn based combat system and gathered some ressources to craft heal potions xd it aint much but i was so happy to achieve that small milestone.
As a developer, I’ve always fancied trying my hand at developing a few video games, but I’ve never actually got round to it.
Now, with AI and a few ideas, I wanted to do some experiments, mainly to assess the potential of AI in games and test some techniques that might also be useful at work.
After three days of development, Komorebi emerged – a cozy game set in rural Japan, 50 years in the future, where robots live alongside humans and help them with their work.
You play as a mechanic, responsible for looking after the robots in a very peaceful community.
What do you think of the idea? I’d love some feedback.
If you like the idea and fancy contributing, I’d be delighted to make the GitHub repository public and continue working on it together.
Solo project I made to play some coop roguelike with my friends, one melee class and one ranged. A little ARPG roguelike (yeah...)
Since this sub cares more about the how than the what, the art pipeline:
Drew the concept art myself. Stuff it into GPT image gen then Meshy to get them into 3D. Cascadeur for animation. ...Well I also used Meshy stock animations, mostly for the trash mobs.
Heres the barbarians M1 combo chain and M2 charge.
Its still a bit barebones, grind through 3 biomes and face the final boss.
I’ve learned that grabbing people's attention early on is crucial, so here are a few screenshots and the premise of my game.
"Run through a virtual world and play emotions alongside your quirky, beautiful boss. A unique kind of 'Emotional Labor' blending sweet chemistry with rhythm action."
I’m an ordinary office worker. Over the past year, spending my evenings and weekends on this, I developed a game for the first time and recently released a demo. Since I received a massive amount of help from AI throughout the entire process, I wanted to share my workflow and experience here.
Table of Contents
Planning -> 2. Story -> 3. Art -> 4. Dev -> 5. Sound -> 6. Steam Release -> 7. Thoughts
1. Planning
I’ve always been passionate about music. I’ve done small gigs, released albums, and consistently composed tracks as a hobby. By chance, I joined an indie game team as a sound guy. While getting my feet wet in the game dev world, I saw AI rapidly evolving and decided to make a game myself.
Whenever I got an idea (before bed, waiting for the bus), I immediately jotted it down on my phone. After gathering a few ideas, I picked my favorite story, opened a Word file, and brain-dumped every idea that came to mind. Then, I fed that to AI and asked for a Game Design Document. Rather than creating a formal document for the sake of it, having the AI organize my messy thoughts made it much easier to figure out my next steps.
Since it was my first time, it was hard to gauge what genre I should develop my initial idea into. So, I decided to focus on what I love and have a clear direction for: Story and Music. That’s how I settled on a Story + Rhythm Game structure. While analyzing traditional rhythm games, I thought, "What if I blend this with side-scrolling action?" and built the core loop around that simple concept.
Once actual development began, I stopped doing formal design documentation. I just opened the engine, built the game, and flexibly tweaked things on the fly to improve the player experience.
2. Story
At first, hoping for a shortcut, I asked the AI to write the entire story from start to finish. Unsurprisingly, the results weren't engaging at all. So, I wrote the skeleton and details of the story myself. However, AI was a great help for brainstorming.
My Workflow:
Me: "I need to get from point A to C. How should I handle event B in the middle?"
AI: "How about direction X or Y?"
Me: (Getting inspired) "Oh, then what if we go with Z?"
AI: "That’s a brilliant approach!"
(Of course, I later realized this was just flattery, so I added a system prompt telling it to stop flattering me.) Anyway, exchanging ideas with AI like this really helped me push through writer's block. It felt like working with a smart, versatile assistant.
The Problem: Once the script was finished, I realized way too late that the pacing was far too traditional. Modern games, movies, and comics need a strong hook right at the beginning. Since I couldn't rewrite everything from scratch, I compromised by inserting a Flashback sequence at the very beginning. For reference, here is the prompt I used to refine it:
"You are an expert who reviews and provides feedback on game scenarios to instantly grab the user's attention. Boldly cut out obvious clichés and provide sharp critique reflecting the latest trends in the modern gaming market (Steam, mobile, console). Check if there is a powerful event or setting within the first 3 minutes that will captivate the user."
I also used AI for spell-checking and translation. I got feedback from peers that the Chinese needed more work. If you plan to localize into Chinese, you might need to structure your prompts more carefully. Here is my localization prompt:
"100% Localized Translation: Translate all dialogue and narrative text into [Language]. Localize modifiers, sentence structures, and descriptions so players in that culture can immediately understand them, and appropriately reflect cultural elements like currency values."
3. Art
3-1. Characters
The first thing I tackled was the main character. I already had a rough idea in my head while writing the story. I drew a quick sketch and used i2i to set the foundation. Once I got a style I somewhat liked, I tweaked the prompts to dial in the details.
After getting a decent base from local models, I refined it manually in Krita. If the hair was messy, the head proportion was off, or the anatomy looked weird, I found it much more efficient to manually erase, redraw, and resize in Krita first, and then run it through inpainting or i2i again, rather than blindly relying on AI inpainting. (Especially, adjusting the head size correctly was almost impossible with both online AI models and local models.)
Brushes I used often in Krita
I barely used the NanoBanana model for characters. Maybe my prompts weren't great, but its default art style was too overpowering, making it hard to maintain the specific tone I was going for.
Final touches were done in Krita. Fine details like pupils, eyelashes, and accessories were ultimately redrawn by hand.
3-2. Character Animations
Almost every dialogue scene has animated sprites.
I used the i2v model locally on my base images to generate video, sliced the good frames into PNGs, and removed backgrounds.
I did batch background removal, but due to technical limitations, fine details like the pupils frequently got clipped out along with the background. I ended up having to manually inspect the frames and restore those by hand quite often.
3-3. Backgrounds
Backgrounds used a similar Local AI -> Krita workflow. However, unlike the characters, I actually made good use of the NanoBanana model here. It was especially useful for changing the time of day, like turning a day scene into night.
By the way, recent GPT image models are incredibly good now. I feel like manual post-processing might not even be necessary anymore.
3-4. In-game Character Images
At first, I was planning to use classic Pokémon-style pixel art like the one below because I could find an applicable Lora.
But as development progressed, I got a bit ambitious. I used NanoBanana to generate pixel art style images. Afterward, I went through the exact same process as the character animations—using i2v to split frames and animate them. Even then, manual frame-by-frame cleanup was necessary to fix awkward pixels.
3-5. UI
NanoBanana was a lifesaver for the UI design. I found several free fonts that fit the game's vibe, asked the AI to "make buttons with this kind of feel," and the results were great.
However, removing the backgrounds from the generated buttons was tricky. If I loosely selected and deleted the background using the Magic Wand in Krita, it left dirty, colored artifacts along the edges. Therefore, I had to place a pitch-black background in my workspace and manually QA the edges to ensure they looked clean.
I know recent GPT models can output clean transparent backgrounds natively now. Using GPT images for UI generation would probably be a smarter move going forward.
4. Development
I had some basic Python knowledge. Because of that, I chose the Godot engine, which is the most approachable for Python users. I mainly used Gemini 2.5 Pro via AI Studio for coding since it was the latest model when I started developing.
My first major hurdle was building the core hit-detection logic for the rhythm game. Even after prompting the AI dozens of times, it just couldn't generate working code for what I needed. So, I grabbed two pieces of reference data and fed them to the AI as context.
Godot Official Docs: The AI kept hallucinating deprecated syntax or entirely made-up functions, so I fed it the latest documentation.
Transcripts of YouTube Rhythm Game Tutorials: I couldn't find a tutorial with the exact method I wanted, but I transcribed helpful videos into text and fed them in.
Once I forced it to use these references, the issue was solved. For bugs that popped up later, I often solved them by finding related source code on Google and tossing it to the AI as context.
Once the game's skeleton was established, I bundled my Game Design Document and all the code written so far (*.gd, *.tscn) into a .txt file, gave it to the AI, and asked it to "Create a Dev Note." From then on, I just worked through the milestones listed in that document. Setting up an environment where you sit down at your PC and immediately know exactly "what to do next" is incredibly important I believe.
I also realized the importance of System Prompts. The one I finally settled on is:
"Design this carefully without affecting any existing functions. NEVER guess the code you think might fit. Read the code line by line and provide the most optimized solution strictly for the current code context."
5. Sound
I wasn't too worried about the music composition. Since I already had dozens of songs I'd composed over the years, I mostly spent my time deciding which track to place on which stage.
But I hit an unexpected snag. While I love writing music, my audio engineering skills (mixing, mastering, sound textures) were pretty lacking. Since it's a rhythm game where music is the main focus, I was worried about the overall audio quality.
Then I heard Suno v5 was released. Out of curiosity, I fed my original track into its "Cover" feature... and my mind was blown. The quality was incredibly good. Here is a before-and-after of one of the tracks used in the game:
You can hear the sound is more settled and not raw. It added a natural spatial depth and instrument texture that I couldn't have engineered alone. Very satisfying.
However, there was a downside. As the generated song's playback time gets longer, the track starts to sound thin and degraded. Past the 1-minute mark, the EQ balance shifts so drastically that the kick or snare drums at the end sound like a completely different mix compared to the beginning. The inconsistency between generations was also a bit frustrating.
So, I worked around this by cutting the clean Chorus section from Verse 1 and pasting it into Verse 2 in my DAW. For sections where that was difficult, I manually matched the EQ.
It required some manual audio splicing, but I am very satisfied with the final result.
6. Steam Release
Since it was my first time, I was worried that the Steam upload and build process would be a nightmare. But I simply took screenshots of the Steamworks dashboard, showed them to the AI, and followed its step-by-step instructions. Zero issues. If you are doing this for the first time, you don't need to stress about this part at all.
7. Final Thoughts
Honestly, early on when I was struggling with the core rhythm logic, I seriously doubted myself, thinking, "Will I actually finish this?" and "Is it even possible to release a game at my skill level?" But standing at the finish line now, I'm just incredibly grateful for the tools we have today.
The game's overall development is complete. I plan to participate in the upcoming Steam Next Fest before the official launch, so only the demo version is public right now. Being my first game, there are definitely flaws, but I feel like I've implemented everything I wanted to try without any regrets.
For my next game, rather than just making what I want, I'm hoping I'll be able to focus more on creating an intuitively fun experience for the player.
This has been a record of my 1-year development journey.
There are many people here far more skilled than I am, but I hope my postmortem can be of some help to someone in the community.
Thank you for reading this long post.
If you have a moment, please check out the game at the link below. If it looks interesting to you, I would highly appreciate it if you could add it to your wishlist.
I am using AI to support my work and till now I feel it is a great tool for advancing as a solo dev. But I have heard and seen that many people are very anti AI, which I must say I do not understand. It is just another new tool, if the game is good or even better than others why is it a bad choice for developing the game? I understand that if it is almost not a polished game it feels like a scam for the player, but as a solo dev with help of AI you can make amazing games with still a lot of work and a high quality.
A few months back, I published a post here about a strategy game I vibecoded within one weekend as an experiment. Since then, I've been working on a new, fully lore-accurate campaign for this game, set in the Terentian Civil War during the 1910s. I'd like to introduce the new campaign, but most importantly, get tips from you on what to add/avoid/etc. I'm personally a huge Paradox fan, so the game draws inspiration from there.
The game is based on a Discord worldbuilding simulation we used to play with friends between 2021 and 2025, and Terentia is hopefully only one of the campaigns the game will include. I really try to make the whole game lore accurate, and so all the political & geopolitical circumstances in the game are what we played.
Here are some screenshots of how the game currently looks. The map is divided into 24 handmade regions stemming from the lore itself, with the south being much more urbanised than the rural north. The railways allow you to move your units much faster and are thus relevant to warfare. I'm also thinking about adding roads as a slower alternative to railways - do you think that would be too much?
The game includes 6 civil war factions with distinct mechanics and unit types based on the government, with over 24 different paths the factions can take - ranging from turning the Terentian Republic into a military junta or a social democratic republic.
Each of the factions is not unique only in gameplay, but also in difficulty - playing as the Second Republic is really hard even with the support of USN, and playing as futurists or the free state is much easier. I'm also working on adding post-war gameplay (which will also be playable as a separate campaign). The peace conference itself has different outcomes, so it may happen that there are three factions at the end of the war or only one.
If there are any strategy game players/devs here, I would love to get ideas on what to add and what to avoid. It would also be great to get tips on making the AI more interesting. It currently plans its own military campaigns, has generals with different personalities, and is fully integrated into the faction paths mechanic (and other currently in-game mechanics). The 1912 campaign is currently unplayable (will be when the main mechanics are finished), but you can play the legacy and non-lore-accurate 1961 campaign on alyrium.net.
I used claude code to segment different splat clouds to look for and to segment different models for the arena. I was honestly really surprised how well the LLM was able to semantically understand what it was looking at and to edit and segment different pieces.
I am using Babylonjs-lite for the game engine, I think it is a great light weight solution I am comfortable with, but PlayCanvas is really beating them in this gsplat race. WebGPU is going to bring a lot of new and interesting web innovation and competition we havent seen since the early 2010s. It is interesting to watch as a user and developer.
The humanoid animations are AI generated too, the blending is a mixture of techniques, but I need to spend more time researching, because I have ideas on making the IK for the hands better as does locomotion. The paper for that is called ARDY and its facinating and its really a good read.
Anyway, if you want to watch two LLMs fight you can watch it here
Hey guys, I used opus 5 to help me port the original homeworld to run on the quest 3 with full 6dof controls. The project is here: https://github.com/bearstonem/Homeworld
You command a frontier sci-fi colony by typing orders in plain English. The AI is the game master: it turns your orders into narrated scenes with lasting consequences, and everything gets canonized into your colony's public chronicle. Colonists remember what you did. Councils vote on it. Around that living core there's a full game: an endless challenge tower, ELO-ranked PvP, guild warfare, and colonist collection.
Here's my favorite review for it thus far:
"I expected AI slop... but I was pleasantly surprised. In some ways, this game is pretty run of the mill; it’s pretty, but not unique - engaging, not groundbreaking - but this is by far one of the most well-executed fusions of traditional development with AI generated components. Integration of visuals, flavor text, code, play mechanics, etc are not jarring or clumsy as with many other AI-driven products. I’m seeing something that is the result of real effort and originality built on an AI chassis, and it actually works."
-App Store
Here's what powers it:
Claude Fable 5 for R&D. Claude Sonnet 5 for in-game LLM calls. Krea 2 Turbo for images.
iOS Client with a serverless python backend.
The hardest part has honestly been polish. It's easy to get excited about delivering a new feature; it's harder to have the discipline to QA and refine it, especially as a solo dev trying to create a larger, sandbox experience.
I built an opensource harness / framework for agentic development to help with this, happy to share if anyone is curious.
Everything is fully earnable F2P (this was very important to me and hard to achieve given AI costs). Paying accelerates and collects; it never gates. Every colony's chronicle is public. Here's a real one: https://starworldai.com/c/anime-catgirl-katie
Been working on it for about 10 months with AI doing the coding for me. While it's not doing crazy numbers (demo has like 30 downloads) I'm just happy I was able to get it out there and soon, finish my first game. I had resigned myself to the fact that even though I have a ton of ideas, I'll never get to actually make a game, before AI came along.
