The problem is not that AI is bad or that the game looks bad. The problem is and always will be the lack of ideas and originality. The more accessible and easy to use a tool becomes, the more people think that things are easy. AI generates video? Oh, so now I can make my own movie. AI can code now? So I can make my own software. AI makes games? So now it's super easy to make my own game. Right?

A big no. Especially in the game industry, the most important thing has been and always will be the idea. You can have the most beautiful game in the world, but if it lacks an idea and originality, it will never succeed. And vice versa, a game can look terrible, but be super original and grab the interest of millions of people.

Here we see many people who are trying to make games, but they all want to go from A to Z, skipping all the other steps in the development of a game.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy to see a cool project here, but as you can see, this is rare. Most posts are just attempts with prompts and no idea, story, or any substance whatsoever. Either way, I really hope we start seeing some gems amongst all of these in near future.

So I messed around the whole day yesterday and today but I finally did it. So I created 3d mesh for islands out of 2.5d model. I created 3d ocean floor and blended them. Changed out png water image and shaders. I added water shaders on top of the ocean floor and added layers of textures. A lot of trial and error, because I needed to mask the islands top because the foam was on mountains. Made waves smaller around coastlines. Also added day and night with illumination and waterline for ships. Still working on lighting! A big upgrade for Curse Of Scully. Android game, but we release all device 3d upgrade for visual scaling aswell. Including PC scaling in the future. We are a small 2 man team. Wokring on this Epic pirate adventure mmo project for 6 months now.

Overall this kinda overhauls the whole look. We went for gameplay first.

Just a little backstory about me first.

I've always dreamed about getting into development and code, and I was in love with the idea of creating and building games. The problem is that I was raised by a controlling mother who didn't have much experience of the world, and when I was young she basically pressured and guilt-tripped me into taking the degree she wanted me to take. On the very last day I could decide, I switched my choice from Computer Engineering to Civil Engineering.

I'll be honest, I'm still a little frustrated about that to this day. But I'm not here to blame anyone or the world for my own decisions. Onwards.

Here's the thing though: I love art. I love making things by hand. These days I've completely changed careers, and in my free time I've started working in theater. My wife is genuinely talented at drawing and creative work, and out of nowhere an idea hit us that got us really excited: "what if we made a game together?"

The plan is to create the art by hand (mostly pixel art), but still build a game that mixes in 3D elements (which means I'm going to have to learn how to model in Blender, and I have absolutely no idea how to do that yet lol)

But here's the catch. The art is the part we have fun with. We genuinely want to take our time to learn, create, and polish the game visually. The problem is... the code. I don't know any! I like programming logic, I studied a bit of it in college and I've taken a bunch of free coding courses, but I never actually sat down and learned the hands-on part of writing code from scratch.

That's where the idea of using AI for that part came from. At first it seemed unlikely to hold up long-term, but even so, I know that if we don't go this route, our game idea (and the hobby my wife and I would love spending our married life on, dreaming up and refining this thing) would never even get off the ground.

I think I've already taken on such a big level of responsibility in life that I don't have the time or energy to stop and learn to write code by hand from zero. And I'm not frustrated enough with my life to want to completely switch careers again, I'm actually pretty happy! I just want to try to make a dream I've had since I was young come true.

And yes, we love thinking, creating, and optimizing ideas. That's the most fun part for us, and it's exactly the part I don't want AI doing.

Sorry for the wall of text, I wanted to share a bit of what's driving this. But my main goal here is to hear from people with way more experience than me.

Is it actually possible (slowly, with no rush at all, knowing full well this could be a years-long project) to build an optimized, functional game where the art is made by us but the code is done entirely by Claude/Codex/whatever it takes? (I've got decent familiarity with these tools since I already use them a lot at work to build simple systems and my own utilities, but obviously I've never built a game or anything really complex.)

Or do I genuinely need to learn to code? This is an honest question from someone who just wants to have fun with his wife and make something genuinely cool. Is it possible? And if not, what would I need to study to make it possible?

Thanks Claude for helping me translate my text, english is not my native language lol

A few weeks ago I posted about the single-player MUD-style/text RPG I've been working on, and a couple people asked if there was a build they could try. I thought it was close to ready then but after a lot of additional work and polishing I think it is finally at a point that others can give it a go if interested.

[Play GreyHarbor Alpha 0.1 on itch.io](https://rwhaynes-cmd.itch.io/greyharbor)

The code to access the page is: greyharbor-alpha

The story is basically available through Act 1. However, it is still very much unfinished and I am sure there are plenty of bugs or other issues I have not found yet.

The basic idea is still the same as my original post, single player text based game with graphical interface, illustrated characters, equipment, enemies and locations. Based on classics like GemStone IV and other old MUDs. [original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/aigamedev/s/wXouvKLahv)

I have been using chatgpt for the graphics and coding and for running pretty extensive combat simulations to test progression, equipment, enemies, and balance as I built out all of the systems.

At this point I'm interested in finding out if the game actually works for others and if it is actually playable/compelling enough to play, although I know the genre won't resonate with everyone.

If you try it please feel free to leave any feedback here. There is also a feedback/bug report feature in game.

Thanks!

Solo dev on LittleBigFoot, a cozy stealth adventure where you're a young LittleBigfoot raised by a park ranger. Almost everything the player does (cooking, fishing, looting) is a human activity done in disguise. This week I shipped the first verb that only a Bigfoot can do: kick a fruit tree and 1–2 apples shake loose onto the ground.

The interesting problem wasn't the kick. It was seeing it. The apple tree's canopy sits between the camera and the player, so the payoff landed on ground you couldn't see. The naive fix is an occlusion cutout keyword on the materials, but the fruit and trunk sit on materials shared by 3,000+ and 1,300+ renderers in the scene, and a fragment clip() costs early-Z on every renderer wearing the material, so flipping the keyword on the shared assets would tax a third of the park to open a hole in one tree. The shipped solution: at runtime, each renderer that should participate gets swapped onto an otherwise-identical material variant that carries the keyword. Nothing else pays.

Favorite iteration moment: the cutout was cutting holes in apples on the ground. Hanging fruit and dropped fruit are the same mesh on the same material, so "which apples go transparent" can't live on the asset at all. It has to be decided at runtime by who owns the apple. One correction from me, and the model restructured around ownership instead of asset.

Clip below. Happy to share how I structure the sessions if anyone's curious.

Lately, I’m trying to find good game dev plus AI channels (youtube, ig and tiktok) but honestly feel like the algorithm keeps showing me the same 6 people. Who’s out there making GENUINELY good content creation (trustable) that u think is underrated?

Another character experiment with img2threejs 1.5.1

Starting with just a 2D reference, the workflow reconstructs the character and turns it into a real-time 3D experience running directly in the browser with Three.js + WebGL.

The goal is more than just generating a 3D model - it’s about turning character artwork into something you can actually explore and interact with on the web.

No Blender.
No GLB in the final result.
Just Three.js, WebGL, and code.

🎥 Full showcase below.

I’ll drop the img2threejs GitHub repo in the first comment for anyone who wants to explore the workflow.

#img2threejs #ThreeJS #WebGL #3D #AIGameDev

Side scrolling shoot em up drawing inspiration from UN Squadron, my xennial friends who have played haven’t mentioned it being too difficult but I’ve gotten feedback from a couple of younger acquaintances that it is too hard for them.

https://losersandnerdsparty.itch.io/jetgrave

Hey everyone,

I’m a solo indie developer building games in my spare time: design, code, balancing, and everything in between.

For a long time, the art barrier kept me from getting a real game off the ground. Using AI-generated spritesheets changed that. It allowed me to focus on what I truly love: gameplay, mechanics, progression, and game feel; and finally turn my ideas into a real game.

This is Tower Legends, my first game on Steam. It's a classic tower defense built around different tower types, upgrades and increasingly challenging enemies.

I don’t really care if it takes off , just leaving my little footprint on Steam already feels like a success to me.

You can visit the Steam page for more details and visuals:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5012660/Tower_Legends/

I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on the trailer, the game’s visual identity, and the overall concept.

Thanks for taking a look!

Saradoc

Right now im still working on getting the core loop working and having a win path. Claude built harness that runs the game through to a tower that occupies 90% of the playable map and achieves 5 star status.

I used ChatGPT to create some pixel art.

Next I made a day and night cycle with some background animations.

Im playing through it and fixing all the little things that come up. AI is not really good at making a playable game by itself. But thats the fun in building with AI, I can shape the game better I believe.

Hi there,

while creating my game, I now understand that the most of work comes from the polishing of the game.

I mean, I have a technically working game which is already visually clean, but lack of details to make it really shine. So I've started working on it. But, damn, this is so time consuming to add a bit of particles here, a bit of movement there, etc.

I thought I was few days away to deliver something. I was so wrong :D

Do you feel the same ?

Hello there again,

I posted several times already and once again I'm back with a weekly update on game that I'm building entirely with AI.

Previous Weekly updates are here:

Week 1 Progress

Week 2 Progress

Week 3 Progress

Week 4 Progress

Sorry about low FPS in the video my macbook is being friend when trying to run it at maximum details, but I want to show how game looks at it's best.

I honestly don't even know what I'm trying to achieve with this game I treat this like a hobby of mine, no particular plans for releasing a game as some people have asked, but if it goes well... who knows. Right now I just want to see how far I can push this "entirely built with AI game" thing that all I have to do is decide what I want and how I want it to look.

Anyway inspiration for this game is Dredge and Civilization (I even tried making it hexagon grid turn based at the beginning but after some time I scrapped the idea as there were no real benefits of turn based fishing game over real time one).

So anyway that would be enough of that, as for the progress itself...

Since last week not much new things were built, but a lot of time was spent on fixing very basic and bad UI ( I guess now it's a bit better, it will still be worked on, but for the time being this will do while in development stage).

I tried also building a map in game, but that is not going too well as you can see in the video 😂

A lot of manual tuning of UI.

Also I changed fishing system and it kinda works like this now (shown in the video):

You have a mini game where you use WASD to keep fish inside target zone, fish has rarity that goes like in WoW: Common > Uncommon > Rare > Epic > Legendary

Longer you keep fish in the target zone better rarity it gets, as rarity gets higher, target zone gets smaller and fish fights harder to escape. If you can not keep fish in the zone your "Strain" bar is being filled, if it fills to the max your line snaps and fish escapes. You can always "bank the fish" by pressing space and get the rarity you are currently on but only if fish is in the target zone.

I know it sounds a bit complicated, but I promise you it's not hehe.

I also want to write some advices here as I got many questions like "How did you build XYZ"...

And my biggest advice would be to ask Claude to build you an in game editor, as it will fail million time over simple things like position of the text or position of some models. Just thing like "Hey build me in game editor that I can use to manually adjust things and save new positions. It will take some time to build those editors but they are life savers, it will save you so much of the hustle and I showed one editor in the video, while I have editor for basically everything ,every HUD element, every model in game and so on.

In game I just showed how I simply moved Lighthouse position in my game and saved "new" location instead of endlessly asking AI to put it to the perfect position.

As always feedback is appreciated ☺️

My friend and I make small apps out of Detroit, and today we released Roomies!

It’s a virtual pet in the Tamagotchi and lofi style. The difference is that an AI writes what he says while you play, so he reacts to how his day goes and forms his own opinions over time. The AI runs locally on your phone. You open the app and start.

If you don’t like AI you can toggle it off and use our precanned pet speech.

24 unique pets to choose from, each with color options
9 mini games
A lo-fi music player
One room that changes light from morning to night
Food, rest, fun, water, and love stats to keep up

This one is just for fun, no data collected or money made off this in any way.

And shoutout to pixel lab ai for giving me the power to turn my notebook sketches into dancing pixel pets, and superpowers via Claude to help clean up my terrible code.

download links at airoomies.com

Open to any feedback!

Along the way I also tried experimenting with building a semi-automated developer blog based on commit and pull request history, https://blog.wordsaresnake.no/ . This allowed experimenting with agent skills to build draft posts based on wording and sentence structures used across several other writing sources, attempting to emulate a more natural writing style.

This cleanup started with an image-based wrench prop for my game, a hand tool with a thick curved handle. My goal was a topology layout I could edit around the curve while keeping the silhouette. In Blender, I planned broad quad rows across quiet surfaces and a gradual density transition where the handle joins the head.

The initial image-to-3D base mesh came from a reference photo I processed in meshy. From there, the retopology and edge-flow choices were mine. Along the inner curve of the handle, I tested a triangle fan to carry the denser junction into the simpler shaft. With the viewport light spinning, that layout pinched. Redirecting those diagonals into uneven quads made the highlight look lumpy, while adding loops pushed the density back up around a spot that will barely move.

My failed attempt was rebuilding that patch as an all-quad grid. I got cleaner rows, but I also flattened the inner curve and lost the chunky shape from the reference.

Would you leave that triangle fan on a static prop, or rebuild it?

The game idea is that you are a little ball in this world of 3d shapes and these 4d shapes took over ur village and killed ur family now its your turn to get revenge and kill the 4d king

I'm currently polishing the demo for Submundus and I've been reworking the gameplay UI.

The original version is intentionally very minimal, but I felt it was starting to look a bit too much like prototype/debug UI.

The redesign gives the cards, deck/discard panels and survival resources a much stronger visual frame, but a few people I've shown it to felt the angular shapes and yellow accents push it too far toward sci-fi rather than dark fantasy.

I'm a bit too close to it at this point, so I'd love some fresh eyes:

Which one would you choose, and what specifically makes the other one feel wrong?

Hi everyone, could someone share a 3d model generator and sprite generator that won't cost me a kidney? Thankss

On the gamedev subreddit, I got a ton of hate and downvotes for my idea of using an AI voice changer, which would let me record voices for multiple characters (male and female) all by myself. I think this would make the dialogue sound more natural than regular text-to-speech.

However, I’m worried about the AI stigma, because if I use AI, Steam will force me to disclose that information. I’m afraid that many players will harass me and my game because of this, without even caring about the game’s content. I'm sure many players will also use a filter, or when they see a warning about AI, they'll immediately start avoiding that game.

Or they'll leave hateful comments under game trailers or posts promoting a game, just for the sake of being hateful.

Have any of you already released a game that uses AI and could tell me about your experiences?

1. How did players react to the promotional materials? Especially the trailers.
2. Did you experience any review bombing or negative reviews because of the use of AI?
3. Are you able to tell whether the AI stigma negatively impacted your sales?

A lot of people say I can look for people on Casting Calls Club, but let’s be honest - looking for voice actors to work for free on a project that will be sold on Steam is exploitation. And I simply can’t afford to hire them. I don’t come from a rich country, so it might seem cheap to an American, but not to me.

About two months ago, I started vibe coding my own MMORPG, and I wanted to share the current state of the project.

The game is called Lythravel. It's a completely free 3D browser MMORPG with voxel graphics, inspired by the old-school MMOs I grew up with, especially Shaiya.

The game currently has:

• 2 factions
• 6 classes
• Level cap of 50
• Dungeons and raids
• PvP maps and a 10v10 battleground
• Enchanting, linking and crafting
• Mounts
• Dynamic zone events
• Character stat allocation and different builds
• And quite a bit more

I also spent quite a bit of time on immersion. The game has a full day/night cycle, ambient sounds like birds, rivers and wind, music tailored to each zone, and different footstep sounds depending on the surface you're walking on.

Development

I've been a developer for over 10 years, although not in the game industry. I'm building Lythravel through vibe coding with Claude Code, and the game itself runs on Babylon.js.

I currently use mostly Opus 5, with Fable 5 acting as an orchestrator. I don't really write or even read the code myself. Instead, I give direction, describe how systems should work and look, and then spend a lot of time testing and iterating on the results.

I also built a custom editor specifically for Lythravel that lets me manually fine-tune things like assets and animations. For some tasks, adjusting them myself through the editor is much faster than repeatedly prompting Claude Code until it gets every small detail right.

Recent Updates

Over the last few weeks, I've been focusing mainly on adding more solo content, so there's still plenty to do even when only a few players are online.

I've added things like:

• Solo dungeons
• More quests
• Jumping trials
• Hidden collectibles with special rewards
• A completely redesigned UI
• Various performance optimizations

I also replaced much of the more traditional CSS-style UI with detailed graphical assets to give the interface a more distinctive game-like look.

A small community is slowly starting to form around the game, which has honestly been one of the most motivating parts of the project. I'm grateful for every person who joins, tries the game and gives feedback.

If you'd like to try the game, follow the development, give feedback, or just hang out with the community:

Play: https://lythravel.com/

Discord: https://discord.gg/SdJrn5WPBQ

These are early builds, so a feedback can actually help us decide what works, what doesn’t, and which ideas are worth developing further!

🃏 Prison Card Game - A prison-themed card game inspired by games such as Slay the Spire and Vampire Survivors.

⛏️ Prison Escape - An incremental prison escape game where your goal is simple: Get out of prison!

🌱 Farm Game - A chill incremental farming game focused on growing and developing your own farm.

🚑 Hospital Emergency Room - A 3D hospital management simulator with a humorous twist.

Want to try them out? Sign up here:

https://forms.gle/3kSDoBvAdCaEJ9sD9

Thanks! ❤️

I just hit release on Stackers on Itch – a 100% free extraction FPS you can play in a browser tab – no install, no account, no launcher. You drop into automated industrial yards run entirely by machines, pry open caches, and try to extract with everything you're carrying.

Specific to dev process: I worked across Godot, ClaudeCode, Blender, Hermes, and fly. Highly recommend custom skills (I made a brief-to-blender-to-godot), built on top of well known ones (like planning-with-files). Blender MCP is life changing.

Would love any game feedback (on Itch plz).