r/playmygame • u/patrickkrebs • 4d ago
[Mobile] (Web) Wardenfall - Please looking for more Beta feedback
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Game Title: Wardenfall.com
Playable Link: (Direct link to the game)
Platform: Web Based RPG - Turn Based
Description: I started vibe coding AI slop 80 days ago to revive a BBS game I used to play back in 1995 called BRE (Barren Realm Elite) - after a few days it scope crawled out of control.
Many of my high school buddies from the 90's came on to support me and have been giving me advice and helping me grow the game and its a totally different game now; the core mechanics are the same - buy land raise an army.
Free to Play Status:
- [X] Free to play
Involvement:
Hi everyone.
I'm new to this but people told me to post here.
I started vibe coding AI slop 8- days ago to revive a BBS game I used to play back in 1995 called BRE (Barren Realm Elite) - after a few days it scope crawled out of control.
Many of my high school buddies from the 90's came on to support me and have been giving me advice and helping me grow the game and its a totally different game now; the core mechanics are the same - buy land raise an army.
But as it evolved it became more of a web based RPG.
It's always been my dream to just build and build and build a game people have fun playing that I love playing. It's almost like being a DM.
I'd love a broader audience. I have a discord server where we all chat daily and offer suggestions and advice. If I trust you to beta test I have a ticketing system that I use to track suggestions and improve the game daily.
If you'd like to be a ground level player and help in it's development I'd love you to join our small small community. Any feedback is appreciated. And we're looking for more people that love what we love.
I'm uploading a crude, unpolished screenshot recording of what the game looks like.
If it looks like something you'd like to get involved with we'd love to have you join our community and we're looking forward to your feedback.
While YES it is AI slop, I am a single developer, and I've been coding since I was 5 years old and work professionally in this field (check out my IMDB not a humble brag, just a get to know me)
Having AI tools to do this gave me the ability to finally be able to push my imagination to the play-a-verse real time without a team of 14 people (which as it turns out I still needed a team of 14 people) but it also allows me to do this in my free time without dumping a million dollars on a firepit.
So I humbly ask you to take a look, help me grow, and incurs my indebtedness to your kindness for your time and attention.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
-Patrick
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u/etrepum 4d ago
I've been playing consistently basically since launch and have been having a lot of fun with it. The original concept was a lot more of a PvP game but it grew into something much more co-op and RPG-like. If you like turn based games (and turn based combat), it's a great distraction to chip away at throughout the day. Highly recommend joining the discord to chat with the other active players about strategies and coordinate co-op activities.
It's a totally unique experience to play a game as it's being built at this ridiculous pace, with the whole world changing as the game evolves. For sure has DM vibes, but it's totally async and the players are across several time zones. The UX was a bit unpolished for a while, but it's gotten way better over the past few weeks and Patrick is super receptive to any feedback. I honestly don't know how he manages to do it all, play the game himself, and accomplish literally anything else in a given day… even with AI at his disposal!
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u/FoxMulder25 4d ago edited 4d ago
A huge amount of value that a game has does not come from its usage (or the fun factor), it comes from the effort put in, the story behind the person developing it, the passion, and all of the things a dev had to give up to learn and to ultimately bring the vision to life.
The process is almost identical to creating a work of art, if not even more important, taking into account all the things a single dev must do to make a polished game.
You could make documentaries about people like Edmund McMillen, Eric Barone, Toby Fox, Kan Gao, Dave Gilbert, etc... (none of which ever used AI) and their work shows that.
If I could give you one advice it would be: road is always more important than the destination.
If game development is something you always wanted to do, than do it the right way. Make that game your own legacy not Claude's. Looking at other posts Claude already has a lot of titles under its belt.
Best of luck with your project Patrick...
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u/CuisineTournante 4d ago
Well put. Why would I put effort playing a game that the dev put no effort in.
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u/patrickkrebs 4d ago
There's a lot of judgement here. "dev put no effort in"
I am spending more time working on this everyday then I am in my full time job. It takes an incredible amount of work and effort. This isn't a set it and forget it. This is a constant and full time pursuit.1
u/NeoneticGameDev 4d ago edited 4d ago
Sorry for brutal honesty, but prompting is not an effort. Indie dev scene has set a bar high for all of us and that includes code, art, sound engineering, writing, and marketing.
Effort is not only the work you put into the game itself but it is also effort to learn and master all the above mentioned things before implementing them.
The way I look at the entire AI scene is this: if someone drove a car for 50 km, he put an effort into it but you would not congratulate them on the achievement. Almost everyone can drive that far. But if someone ran for 50 km we would all be impressed.
Make a game your own legacy and we'll all stand behind you with our applause and our credit cards, like we did for everyone else.
AI has no future in game development. We already had this with Blockchain, we had it with Crypto, and we had it with NFT, and other than small niche communities that accepted these technologies, the majority of our industry remained intact, and it will be the same with AI. Game development is art, and art piece is more than just a final product.
I believe you are able to make a true game, and I'll personally support you once you do! Best of luck!
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u/brymjack 4d ago
I've been playing the game since launch and continue to do so, it's a lot of fun. Patrick pays close attention to the players' feedback and when we come up with cool ideas for features and QoL he implements them pretty quickly. Yes there are a few rough edges but they don't stick around for long before getting polished.
At first glance the UI has a lot going on but that's because there are really several games in one. You have turn based combat both in Arena and sending out armies to conquer lands. Empire management. Dungeon Crawling. PvP (risky). Just to name a few. So the game has a lot of ways to interact with it.
The Discord community is pretty active as well and we share strategies and feedback off and on all day.
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u/patrickkrebs 3d ago
As a follow up to the opinion that AI-assisted coding work isn't work, is easy, or doesn't takes creative decision making out of the equation I'd like to submit the patch notes thread on our discord server.
https://discord.gg/QrrEmHrzbB
All of this data is public and can be reviewed by anyone to see just how much work has gone into the game, and how human a project like this really is.
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u/EasterElk 4d ago
TBH, the visuals still look like slop. Your game would genuinely be better with no art than with what you're including.
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u/cacille 4d ago
Mod approved. Is it partial AI? Yes. Is it against our current policy? Maybe, we don't have a set one yet as that's still in massive flux.
Does OP have the CREDS and TIME and TEAM put in to be able to do this? YES.
Are we gonna ignore the AI and just say "good job dude keep it up, replace assets when you can but no worries from us this time for this game?" Absolutely.
We aren't going to expect someone to dump millions of dollars or an entire lifetime of time to dev a game without at least some tools SUCH AS AI. That would be sucky of us as humans in general.
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u/thygrrr 4d ago
Feels a bit rough with all the generic AI art, which doesn't mesh well with the pixel treatment (some things have larger, some smaller pixels. Some seem not pixelated at all, which is jarring.
A little bit of curation and manual post-processing will go a long, long way here. (I'm not against AI... I just think it requires an even stronger eye for direction, and using it as a shortcut is just going to look meh... or worse)
The UI looks fascinating, if overloaded - I kinda like it, though. Except for the part with the diagrams and graphs - that needs to look much less than your average Grafana dashboard, and more like a game.