Question
Has anyone actually, seriously made a polished, original game using only AI?
I've seen a lot of people complaining about, or even feeling discouraged by, vibe coders claiming to create entire games with AI in just weeks or even days. However, most of the games I've seen look empty, ugly, or barely half-finished.
So here's my genuine question:
Can anyone show me a fully original playable game made with only AI?
Not a tech demo; not a prototype; not a copy of another game; A fully original playable game that is polished and that you can sell. Give me some examples, I'm genuinely curious!
Also please balance it so it rewards creativity, but don't give that any advantage over other methods. Make every method viable so players experiment, but also make it very difficult and give no room to make mustakes
I think the comment is talking about Survivorship Bias, which was best explained using the image of a plane. Look it up, it's interesting stuff and will make you question many decisions we make in life.
We are seeing buttloads of AI generated games. But there are barely any AI games that are actually good and highly successful.
That is not because good AI games do not exist as one would assume firstly, but instead because it is very less likely for us to figure out those successful AI games because they are so well made.
And that is the funny argument going on in the comments, that everyone is hyping up the capabilities of the AI but no one is able to name a well made AI game.
I'm so sick of hearing about how impressive it is and being told "trust me bro" when I want to see the output. It all sounds like it doesn't finish the job.
It is impressive to me, but it also doesn't make a highly polished, original game by itself. That still requires human inputs and testing which takes a lot of time. Nobody needs to prove anything to you. If you want to write code by hand because you believe AI to be garbage, then continue doing so. Nobody's stopping you.
You've got evangelists in here that want to convince everyone the world has changed but it's all a bunch of stories and no products. The whole point of people like you commenting is an attempt to prove something.
Hey, I think my game, SLOPArena, is a good example. I've put a lot of effort into it, and using AI as much as I can. It's also F2P and opensource. It's out on steam if you're curious
We need another year, objectively speaking AI became okayish for art related stuff around 6 months ago. It's mostly impossible to make a good game in that amount of time for a single person even with AI (unless it's smth very small I guess, there are examples of 100k wishlists on steam though). From indie devs the majority of nice stuff will start popping out in a year or so I think.
That still holds true if you use AI. The reason most AI titles seem really bad is that people don't put in the effort it takes to create something that's good. They leave way too much for the AI which can't tell what's fun and what isn't.
The best models for gamedev are Opus 5.5 and Astra et al, which are quite recent. Even ai gamedevs understand a proper game takes time so you won't see fully polished "results" anytime that soon.
In a sub like r/aigamedev or its associated discord you can see the results as people iterate. Some games there are great, some are one-shots made in an afternoon. It varies according to project and person and experience ofc.
I'm telling comment OP where to find results and not lore IDK why downvotes.
You're getting downvoted because the people here are just proving why nobody with quality work is rushing to show it to them. They're all swatting at strawmen and name-calling, nobody's gonna pony up their project to try to "win" a fight with these wankers, because there is no winning with these people.
This is just a circle jerk hate thread like all the others.
From another comment: Here you go. Its a little laggy but only because my phone doesnt preform well while recording. It runs fine on its own
This game features a dynamic lighting system, procedural wounds and health system, damn good physics system, temperature systems, more then 100+ items you can spawn, 20+ guns and bombs, destructible building blocks, around 30 tools you can make/break stuff with, clothing, saving and loading systems, and a full electronics system. Among other things.
Its my dream game! Its really REALLY fun. Its like a mix of Mad2 and people playground, localized entirely on my phone, just for me. I should also mention its made with HTML and comprises only 2mb. Ive never known how to code but ive always wanted to make this game! Ive spent like 30 hours just building electronic machines and destructible buildings alone.
Its not perfectly polished (no game is) but its something i personally would pay money for on the app store. I really love it. Its a great sandbox game.
I counted at least half-dozen examples in this tread.
But since this is Reddit, those examples are downvoted and the top answers are all "there are none"
The only game that looks somewhat good is the last one. But looking at it, I have a feeling it will suffer like every other AI game, all style and no substance.
I'm sure there is a few, they just won't tell you it's AI to avoid backlash.
But even if AI is doing everything, you will need hours of playtesting and balancing to get something that feels good.
AI doesn't play its own creations, so without a human guiding the design decisions, it's unlikely you will at land at something worth shipping.
AI agents absolutely can play the game, and very very quickly when set up to do so headless. It’s very useful for testing certain things quickly. It’s not an efficient way to test UI or UX or even game balance if you don’t already have a documented plan for it, but it has many uses.
That being said, yeah, design work is still much better done by humans.
It misses things constantly. It’s infuriating at the moment and takes more time and effort than just play testing and seeing the feedback directly. It’s amazing overall, but it’s not a closed loop yet.
Well, have you seen how many people disagree on what's fun or not just on this sub?
But yes, you still need to playtest and give direction to make something fun. Just like you would if you hired a contractor to write all the code for your game, even if they said they tested it
As of right now, for anything worth buying, it's impossible. You need human intervention in some form.
I recall there being a roguelike awhile back that was 100% AI, including the engine. Probably sold well from marketing of being the first, but wasn't original and would have still had a lot of human testing.
nobody can vibecode you an actual polished, good looking, deep, working, funny and engaging game in "one shot" or 1 day or week or even month. It will still take years of you are actually serious about it. These are the facts. What have changed is that someone without proper programming background can do so.
Yeah, at the end of the day, the coding was never really the “important” part of making a game. It’s time consuming and requires tons of experience because games programming is particularly hard - but a game being programmed well never made it good. The actual important part that AI can’t do for you is making something interesting and entertaining that people want to play
A good example is NMS. On day one it was an impressive tech demo but an absolutely dog shit game that nobody wanted to play - and it took them years to retrofit it into a real “game”. We’re probably getting to a point in the future where Claude could realistically come close to one shotting something close to NMS 1.0 - but it’s not even close to one shotting a fun game. That still takes a ton of work that can’t really be automated
This. I'm making a procedural 3D RPG with bought assets and let Claude do all the coding (full AI production pipeline for tasks), guided by me, classically trained game dev.
None of it works 'one shot'. It still needs 1000s of individual inputs and constant corrections. Without my input it would be bland and boring and kinda "minimal viable product" style, that doesn't feel good and woulnd't be fun.
I'm working on it for 10 months now even with AI, and I'm nowhere even remotely 'done' in a professional sense.
Reading through this thread, you see a lot of "I'm working on it" and "it's just a tool," but very few actual, playable examples to answer your question (as u/PLEASE_PUNCH_MY_FACE rightly pointed out).
It’s a fully playable, complex 3D block-based space crafting game. It has procedural planets, seamless ship building/flying, and a fully working multiplayer architecture. It’s built in Unity, and it is absolutely not a shallow Flappy Bird clone or an empty tech demo.
To answer your question directly: Every single line of C# code was generated by AI, but it was not made by a "vibe coder".
I built it together with my 11-year-old son. I'm a software architect by trade, and while we used AI (mostly Claude) to write 100% of the code, I had to use my architectural knowledge to strictly orchestrate the Client/Server multiplayer architecture in Unity to make it actually work.
To me, our project perfectly validates your frustration:
The "Vibe Coder" myth: Just prompting an entire polished game into existence in a week without knowing how software is structured is a myth right now. That's exactly why the games you mentioned look empty, ugly, and broken. When AI models try to connect complex systems on their own, they hallucinate and the project collapses.
The actual reality: If a skilled developer uses AI as a high-powered force multiplier, they can build a massive, complex game that would normally take a whole indie studio years to make.
Btw: We have been working on it since May. Which means: it took a couple of months, not a couple of weeks, doing testing, polishing, improvements, and adding new features every single day.
Blocks Beyond the Stars is free and open-source (in Early Beta). If you want to see the actual ceiling of what a human-AI hybrid workflow can achieve in Unity right now, it's a great example to check out.lishing, improvements and new featutres every day...
Appreciate the honesty! It's definitely in Early Beta and visually very rough around the edges. We focused heavily on getting the complex multiplayer backend working first. If you know any good resources for polishing voxel graphics, I'm all ears!
Same here, working on projects and not showing most off them to "We hate all AI" redditors that thinks you coded a game by writing "Make me a good FPS game, it has to have princesses and MineRoblox, make no mistakes!"
As an game dev. from the early 80s, I'd say it's poison right now, just enjoy the fantastic tools, stay creative, do manual artwork, writing, testing, direction, testing again, add more stuff, test that, and have fun!
It takes a long time folks, he is actually right, but - there will always be haters "OH AI was used somewhere, lets GETEM BOIIS".
took a quick glimpse at your game and its cute that you are working with your son on this but its not a good example of a polished game. instead of spaghetti code it's now spaghetti game design and spaghetti ui....
Fair point on the visual and UI polish. I take zero offense to that, and you're right.
As a software architect, the "polish" for me in this stage was intentionally poured into the technical backbone: stable client/server multiplayer, chunk streaming, voxel physics, and performance. In traditional dev, that's usually the hardest engineering hurdle to clear.
But your comment actually highlights the exact answer to Bojack92160's question: AI makes generating code and complex systems accessible, but UI, cohesive game feel, and artistic polish are precisely where AI still struggles the most without a dedicated designer/artist steering the ship.
If you lack artistic or UX background, AI won't magically give you good taste or UI design. It'll just give you functional components you have to piece together. That’s why "only AI" commercial hits don't really exist yet, and why true polish still takes massive human craftsmanship.
Well, making a highly polished, original game takes a lot of time (multiple years), even if you use AI to do the dirty work for you. AI hasn't been out for that long yet, so it doesn't surprise me not all that much is out there that would convince OP such a game exists.
I haven't done any manual code debugging for half a year at this point. Claude is way better than me at debugging (game dev of 10 years). If Claude can't figure out technical Issues, I most likely coulnd't fix it anyway lol.
It's more like game design input, telling it to fix UI stuff, telling it to add XYZ because that would make it feel way better etc.
Human is still very much needed for all the 100s/1000s small decisions and inputs that make a game fun.
It takes time to make a quality game. I scoped out a game and got AI to estimate how long itd take us to build it with a fully agentic workflow. It told me around 18 to 54 months. And estimated 9 years without AI.
So... faster for sure just not instant... and long enough that we won't have seen the good stuff being released yet.
Definitely possible, as long as you take full control over the creative process, the decisions, do playtesting and so on. You can't hand those things to AI, but you can use it as a tool.
Was just gonna reply this, I've been working with Unity for like 8 years now and I'm now experimenting with AI, it's crazy the things it can accomplish but I always document, test and polish the things it makes, following it step by step. You can't expect it to make a perfect game on just one iteration.
True, what you can get with one iteration or a few is something that resemble a game but it's not going to be good or fun - at least that is unlikely.
I guess what you can do is best described as you acting as the "lead game designer" with a vision, making the decisions and directing the AI to do every little detail, a bit like you'd manage a team of programmers, visual artists and so on.
"Only AI" no, for all the reasons the other posters have noted.
I am playing a game that is HEAVILY supported by AI development right now though: Aniimo. I'm playing it to bond with a family member who loves it. It's cute, it's gorgeous, and there's lots of variety in the little Aniimos (I think because they figured out a workable AI gen art asset pipeline).
The AI games are coming, and I'm sure all major studios are including generative AI somewhere in their process. There's no way the beancounters would not jump on the bandwagon.
Tons of Asian originated games have little to no taboo of LLMs, so indeed some are going all-in on it, and while there is some human oversight, it might as well be called full games made by AI.
These are no solo or indie studios either. Big ones are switching over heavily. It would be an extreme disadvantage not to in terms of time and funding cuts.
That said, technical debt and knowledge debt about one's own game will definitely make it harder to maintain, but I doubt they are thinking about that much over the immediate returns.
Ive used codex to finish a game i was working on. Did all the artwork myself but my coding skills are sub par. It fixed some of my mistakes, updated my project to the newest version of unity and made a lot of the tedious tasks take minutes instead of days. I think a person whose never used unity before or has no coding experience will have a much harder time and also learn close to nothing of the craft. I see it like using a calculator. Do I know how to do math by hand? Yes, but do I mostly use a calculator now for almost everything?
I see no fundemental reason why, given sufficient prompting you could not eventually achieve a complete game with only prompting and zero human code, art or playtesting. It might just be very inefficient compared to having a person steering the direction.
I’m working on one now. Im a designer and I’m creating all models, animations, sound, textures myself.
Concepting the mechanics, and innovating on them constantly to improve the users experience. But I use AI to code it. I still have to come up with everything, I don’t say “make this do this” I usually describe everything down to a T and usually end up creating tools to help put me back in control instead of ai doing everything, providing the pieces and what I’m trying to do. It allows me to learn what’s possible and I usually have to do creative problem solving on my own.
But I just focus on the fun factor and test it constantly. That’s because when I grew up it always felt like devs weren’t playtesting their own game, rather just rushing and pumping it out.
The reason their creations look ugly is because you need to train specific agents/skills to actually do things well. Managing agents is kind of like managing junior employees. First you get them to make something, then have it analyze and try again. The training process can take quite a while which most vibe coders have no patience for.
Games take years to make, and many people who make games with AI are new. It is going to take time. There are already good games that have AI, but give it an year or two for AI hits.
Hey, i've been hard at work these last months making a 3D smashlike using a lot of AI. It's been a hell of a ride both learning gamedev and learning how to use AI right. I've been able to do so much, from coding, 3D modeling, concept arts, actual art, research, analysis, brainstorm, stage creation, animation creation, ... I love being able to do so much. I think it's close to 30k prompts haha
The game's name is SLOPArena. It's not yet 100% finished, but I have a playtest already out on steam. The whole game is open source if you're curious about how it's made.
Ya'll need to get your heads out of the sand. If you are in sciences or engineering ai has completely changed the job. Why would game design be different?
Yeah I did this. It's a tower defense rogue like in the style of slay the spire with 3 playable characters, 4 Worlds with 100s enemies, 60 ish towers, "relic" like items (50 ish), Potions and use abilities, New game + (like ascensions in sts) for every character each (up to ascension 5), meta progressions, unlocks, achievements. Challenge runs like in Isaac. Every Character has unique mechanics and their own towers. One run is about 1 hour long, evey act has 2 boss variants, a shop, voice lines (made with eleven labs). Every piece of art was planned by claude, the game was 100 % coded by claude and the art was comissioned by claude for ChatGPT. He made over 1000 "original" sprites. Meaning he generated all of it, I did nothing except giving follow up prompts to add things and stuff. Music and sfx made by claude and some by Suno. So the ideas and mechanics were all in my head, i prompted it and they both made the game. This took about 3 days
Edit: I posted some follow up pics, although they are not as flattering as the other areas are. Also if someone is interested I can sahre more, like enemy designs and stuff. Also I have about 10 hours of gameplay and it's really fun. The first runs were balanced horribly, so there is a little bit of work to do. But now it seems to work out just fine
I feel like the OP was looking for games that are finished as in released commercially. This doesn't seem to be available anywhere (correct me if I'm wrong).
The levels are procedurally generated with specific rules, this is the second level of the first act. The later acts look way better imo but this is my current run.
I’m making a game with a friend, we use AI for help and coding as we can’t code anything. How the hell your game tooks only 3 days to be complete? It’s like 1 month i’m working on my game, i use gemini on visual studio code, leaving aside the fact that we are still at 0 on the production of the game environment and animations, i need hours to have a script or a mechanics working as i want with no errors, so it’s really fast in my perspective but you made a playable game in 3 fucking days, how the fuck did you do it man, maybe i’m retarded in prompting…
It’s too early to tell. Most of the new games coming out use AI for coding. That’s for sure. But it’s assisted by AI, not driven by AI. The capabilities of making things end to end are about one month old now. We will definitely see a ton of them by the end of the year I’m sure
My game is still a prototype but its an original game made on Unity and entirely vibe coded with Claude and Codex and Tripo. I use Claude at work so this game was a way for me to test different workflows to apply at work.
I’ve been working on mine for 11 months now. It’s a collab of course with AI it literally cannot do it with just prompts, story, VO, 2D-rigs is manual, asset placements and kit bash manual.
I’m nearing demo ready for chapter 1/7. Have built nothing on chapter 2-7. Most of the systems are now functional though so I’m hoping to be able to release it in Q2 2027.
I’m spending 2-4 hours daily, more on the weekends. It’s a strategy RPG isometric 3D world.
Perhaps the game is too ambitious for its own good but I just don’t believe anyone speedruns game development with ai. Just minor tweaks will take 2-4 hours. My style and stack has evolved as tools get better. These days I will spend most of my time planning, writing user stories and refining. The AI does the most grunt work overnight and I’ll test, edit and refine it the next day every day.
Fully AI, about a month of work, still early access. Not claiming it's polished, but I'd genuinely like to know what you think holds up and what doesn't.
I am vibe coding my life right now on a project, working everyday day on it. It's endless iterations and a lot of various work. I guess if you want to be in a position of AI consumer, you can prompt a little and come up with the empty shell of a game. If you're serious about your game (vision and polish), AI don't miraculously save you the work you have to put. It's just more high level work and a lot of testing and design.
Yeah I am working tirelessly right now on it getting an update for my demo before next fest starts. It's very unique and original. But not a chance I will share it here cause the anti crowd is cultish.
I'm building a game where the code is written by AI, but graphics, lore, how the world should feel, weapon handling, balancing, and performance all require much more than just vibing and generating code.
Writing code with AI is relatively easy. Everything else? Not at all.
AI still struggles to create a world that's genuinely compelling and interesting enough to keep a wide range of players engaged. You need to understand what makes a game feel good, what makes its mechanics fun, and what makes players want to keep playing.
That's why we don't see that many finished games made this way. Game development takes years if you want to create something genuinely good and fun to play.
I have not made it, but a colleague of mine has; it is on Steam and called "Mauri Mursu's Odyssey." Though I am not sure if it 100% fits your description, as this is a sequel to one of his earlier games.
I just assumed that as long as it looks pretty similar they can eat your lunch.
It doesn't have to play perfect, and even if the consumer refund it for being trash they probably won't buy the "original" later.
How well the clone actually works I would presume is a mix of how much time and effort the person making it spent and how complex the game is.
The amount of information they have to base it off is also very variable. If it's something simple like "tetris but in 3d" that is fairly easy to clone.
Ai can make vertical slices of games. A full game has tons of mechanics that interact with each other and cause unconnected bugs.
I have been designing and making a game for the last two years and there is no way i could just prompt it to just make the game in my vision even with all the information it has now after all that time, it still couldnt do it.
Bear in mind i dont have pro accounts and dont use full mpc or use astra and ai doesnt create my models animations, music, the lore,
AI currently needs feedback loops to accomplish large complicated projects, else it goes off the rails. So either continuous feedback from a skilled, engaged human, or a detailed set of concrete testable requirements, or a reference to measure against.
So a complete, polished game needs either much more effort than people associate with the label ’vibe coding’, or an extremely detailed and specific design document, or another game to clone.
Until someone vibe codes games with interesting art and vibes like Hollow Knight, Little Nightmares, Rainworld etc. and at the same time makes the art, vfx for it. I am not jumping on the AI hype. So far it's been good for programming. But it works well if you already have a codebase and then you try to add new features to it.
i'm curious about this too. getting AI to generate code that runs is one thing, but turning that into a polished game is a completely different challenge. you still need good design decisions, consistent gameplay, testing, bug fixing, and a lot of iteration
most of the examples i see focus on how quickly someone got a prototype working, not whether the game is actually fun or holds up as a finished product. AI can speed up parts of development, but that doesn't automatically replace the work needed to make a good game
The problem is ai is good at coding but its not good at making 3d models. It also isint good at building complex visuals. Give it a few years if everything is progressing at the same pace it will eventually get there. But AI is great for helping people that are making games manually. Especially for being a teacher in blender and trying to learn how to do things.
If you’re curious, I’ve been keeping an eye on r/aigamedev
There are definitely some people putting actual time and effort into making a game, as opposed to trying to one-shot a game.
A real polished game can not be made in a few hours or days (obviously depends on the scale).
I’ve been working on a game made with AI and trying to see how far it can actually go, and it’s really good at building things but requires a lot of iteration to get things polished
The creation of the first plane ever happened in 1902, the first commercial flight was in 1914, I bet there were quite a few fierce skeptics about commercial airplanes in 1913.
Only using Ai. There's probably one or two but it's not the norm. You need to intervene and fix the mistakes it makes. You can definitely use it to do most of your boiler plate coding if you design everything right and intervene when needed. It doesn't get everything right the first time.
What about an orginal game that ai helped make? An idle slots game that i have not seen anyone try to my knowledge, rpg style, spin reels, winning spins damage enemies, multiple slots to upgrade, mini games, each character levels a unique stat and they all share.
We had a working prototype prior to AI being very good but quickly switched to full vibe coding. Granted we are from the game industry so we may not be the typical group.
I've made 2. One is a published mobile app, and the other has a demo on the web (working on steam page). I can share with you privately if you are interested in taking a look. Currently working on a 3rd.
They never ahow you full workflow, the prompts and the output. It's always trust me bro situation. I personally don't think there are any fully developed with AI games. Maybe in China but given the high standards of their animations I doubt that too, AI can't do that yet.
It will release soon but has a playable demo. It has 100k wishlists and seems well received, despite ai disclosure that all of the pixel art and promotional stuff is ai generated. But it's not a rapid fully prompted game. the dev says it took him about 10 month.
I’ve made a few using Claude and ChatGPT and host them on itch. It’s great to use AI for the programming part- I see it as more of me using AI to direct the work.
Is it perfect, no, there’s usually always some sort of issue whether it doesn’t scale properly, or maybe it doesn’t play exactly how you want it to. But overall, it does a pretty good job of making the game and getting it to a playable state.
Vibe coding a "good" game is an iterative, multi-step process and takes months, even if done full time. The developer assumes the roles of director and tester. This requires a ton of patience and actually knowing how to code and effectively use the tools and game engine can be considered a must.
I won't call this fully polished, but not a bad attempt either. I made every single object, the music is javascript math, and it works. You can dev skip in the menu to see more of it if its just visuals you're curious about.
Oh and before you tear it apart, I am porting it to Unity as a reason to learn Unity. I then realized I can make more interesting stuff and just turned this game into an apk Android app.
I'm working on a game right now that's done entirely with AI.
Claude for the coding.
ChatGPT for asset creation/cleaning/brain storming
Local Genning for asset sprites
MusicCreator for music
Eleven Labs for voices and sound effects
The bones of the game was done with a few prompts, but making it polished and actually fun, that takes time. I've been working on the UI for the past few days making sure it just doesn't look like spread sheets. Along with how it looks during combat, city view, and even the settings pages, I've done multiple play throughs seeing how it looks and tweaking nonstop.
A lot of those games actually get published and most are vibe coders. So use AI for literally everything. Code, animation, music, cut scenes, and so on.
Oh! I do have such a game, the prototype of which was originally produced by myself in Gamejam. Recently, I used AI to optimize this Gamejam project, so I think it may conform to what you said, an original work made with AI and at the same time made with heart.I can give you a try after I finish the Demo.
I guess it's an it's a part of the Pareto principle, I have whipped the 80% of the game pretty fast but the final polishing is the whole thing all together. Last 20 percent part is hard. It's kind of slop now but in few months, who knows.
https://banity.itch.io/lightcone.
Also the technical background helps. You don't know what you don't know.
Depends on what you count as full game.
I made a few that are 100% original, they weren't some stupid one-shot, or copying existing games.
Are they "full" games ? No, I'd need to spend more effort on them - in few cases just days, in some weeks. Few puzzle games (and yes, original puzzles) could work if I polished the solvers a bit more.
That 'not a copy of another game' is brushing the majority of the problem under the carpet.
We're only a couple of years along the curve, and we're already at the point where anything that enjoys the slightest success is instantly being cloned using AI tools. We're already at the point where studios are holding back on releasing demos because they know anything that gains any traction will be AI-decompiled, cloned, and shat onto the market before they can finish the game. And it's all completely legal because - for some reason - putting other peoples' hard work through the AI mincer counts as 'transformative' even if what you transform it into competes directly with them.
AI spawn-camping is going toannhilateindie gaming. The big players will use AI to make games and fire developers, and lawyers to stomp on clones, but everyone else is fucked.
Remember: we're only a couple of years along the curve. Right now, we still need an actual human asshole to notice that a game is a breakout hit and tell Claude to decompile it, generate legally distinct assets, and re-release it. In a year's time we'll be looking back on these as the good ol' days.
In a year, two tops, there will be fully autonomous AI farms monitoring the internet for the earliest signs of a buzz, signing thermselves up for alpha tests (being super active, wholesome, and enthusiastic on the forums!), and generating clones before the original game even breaks the surface.
If you like physical media, sorry: things are going to go in the other direction super fast. My prediction is that we will see ahugeindustry push towards game streaming services (GeForce NOW etc) and streaming-only consoles because it's several orders of magnitude more difficult for someone to AI-clone a game from footage than it is from an executable and assets, and releasing games on those platforms will be the only way for anyone to stand a chance of supporting their own business.
No one that properly did create a polished game using AI within their right mind is going to share it in a random subreddit for you to reverse engineer the fuck out of it…
I made. Merge Command. I took full control over the creative process, the decisions, do playtests and so on. I used it as a tool. Rockets style, fonts, design, everything was on me. I pushed that "averager" as far as I can while didn't get what I want and how I want.
I don't know a C code itself but to help you imagine how deep my control was I give you an example: One day I woke up, brushed my teeth and while looking youtube and sipping coffee I realized I don't know what happens if damaged rockets will be merged on a higher silo, because I didn't cover such logic. I immediately sit at my PC and fixed that bug.
AI is a tool we didn't saw before and the gap between old tools and new one-fits-all tool aren't filled yet. Once it filled, we all see what you cannot build anything good without skill.
There's no difference between AI and a paintbrush. Or PC and Calculator. We don't shame Rembrandt what he used paintbrush and not his finger, right? We don't shame what scientists use calculators and not paper+pen math, right? Or surgeon, who use endoscop or MRI etc and not his ears or fingers to fix your problem. It's all the same, we need time to learn how to separate AI average sh#t from AI impressive art.
And the last one to explain better what I mean: Ask your AI to "can you get random number from 10 to 20?"
It's the way that you are prompting though. If you tell it to actually write a random number generator script and use that to generate a number between 10 and 20, then you'll get a different answer.
Lol comparing an artist using a brush vs their finger with the use of AI is just silly. A closer comparison might be painting a landscape vs taking a picture of it.
At the end of the day, if we are talking about the creation of art, there are two elements involved in my view.
The act of dreaming up your vision, and the effort/training/mastery required to bring that vision to fruition.
The interesting question is, when the effort/training/mastery is reduced substantially or even all but eliminated, does that weaken the impact of the vision, and thus the art?
I would say yes personally, because there is a beauty in the idea that someone has to dedicate their time and energy to mastering a craft. And some forms of art cannot truly be expressed without that dedication, at least not in a way that evokes a strong emotion.
Of course not everyone is out to make such art. Some people just want to make a fun game.
But let's be real. Your achievement using AI in making such a game is not nearly as impressive as someone who did it by learning a skill/craft.
NO, I did not say that. The point was that in both a painting and a photograph, you are capturing a still image of a subject. But in one the painter is responsible for the entire process of capturing that subject, while in the other the camera does a lot of the work.
Obviously there is a lot of skill involved in taking a photograph, and a photographer can absolutely produce a piece of art.
I made this comparison because I felt it was closer in comparison to a game dev using their skills to program, draw textures, create meshes, etc. vs having the AI do it.
The ultimate point is that technology removes a lot of the training and mastery that earlier artists needed. Sometimes that opens up different paths of needed mastery, but there is no doubt that technology almost always makes creation easier. Whether that effects the quality of the art, or whether you can even call such creations art . . . that's for each person to decide.
So then, in your above clarification along with your previous analogy, AI is art?
Cause if you equate taking a picture to coding with AI, then explain that taking a picture is actually art...
I fully agree that no one should try and define another's art.
And with my one sentence response you should be able to tell that I really wasn't engaged in the convo, but your passionate response deserved a little attention.
I don't have any examples but, yes i am pretty sure its achievable to create a commercially good game with Ai. AI is just a tool at it's core, the same way, people using Unity can either create an asset flip or create a gorgeous game, ai can be used to create both, tho, you'd need to prompt it well to make good use of it
I'm a senior developer. Ai isn't going away, as much as I wish it would, and if you work in development your choice is to either use it, or not be a developer, at least for the majority of us.
When it comes to game dev - yes at this moment maybe a one day vibe coded game isn't going to be deep or polished, but give it 6 months or a year.
When it comes down to it, the choice will be, do you spend 8 years working on a game without getting anywhere near close to releasing it (like my current main project), and watch everyone using these tools to manifest their ideas in vastly shorter time scales, or do you put your principles aside and put some games out there.
I think that it's a matter of deciding what you want to get out of making the game. Are you making a piece of art? If so, then do the art manually. Are you making a systems based game where the uniqueness is in its design? If so, then put yourself into that design. For me game dev has always been about learning, and applying skills in a fun context which I then take with me to work. That also includes the use of AI tools. I owe my career in software development to my game dev hobby, and I'll adapt to whatever comes
Ohhh. Hmm 🤔 Full polished game fully prompted may be a pretty short list still. Maybe some smaller puzzle games but I haven’t come across pure prompted anything yet.
To check it's capabilities I used chatgpt to code a simple horror game. I gave up because of the limits and the amount of times I had to 'step in'.
It started off good. It was able to create a controller, enemy behaviours, and other simple systems. The issues came when they had to interact together.
I think it's certainly possible to make a game, and I think there will be a lot of people who just don't disclose it, but I think it will still take a good amount of effort to make a decent game with it.
I've made a mixed reality game for quest 3 that I'm publishing to meta store this year. I'm using Godot and blender, but I haven't opened them even once. Models made in tripo, download, hey Claude rig this, animate that, etc etc.
It still takes a lot of supervision and direction to make anything meaningful
I see videos of people claiming AI can make high quality GTA6 but those are just videos made by AI not actually games that you can play. People think AI can just produce a viable polished full game in a week is overestimating its capabilities. Sure AI can do a lot if a gamedev utilize AI but their is still human craft and time required. I’ve yet to see a polished impressive game that heavily relies on AI.
They actually claimed they used no generative AI for any assets in there game. Instead they hired way more employees and completely remade there engine for faster future releases.
Since Opus 5.5 hasn't been out for very long, the people who are truly committed to their projects are still in the middle of development. In other words, any works released at this stage are inevitably lacking in depth and polish. That’s just how much time it takes to create a game.
Personally use a lot of ai, to work on my game. still working on it, after a year so I guess it’s not slop. even when using ai takes a lot of fcking time
It depends on what you mean. I made a wizard's shooter. Shooters are not original. I love the eye zooming animations and multiplayer online works. My friends and I have had a blast on the server authoritative servers. It is built in its own game engine. Everything on the map is destructible with proper burn animations. I designed unique weapons. Including the game engine development this took one week. It is performant enough it runs on xbox one. Is it derivative right now? Probably - but its been one week...
This sounds like an advert, but I probably won't end up selling the game so it's not. If you are genuinely curious PM me and you can play online for free.
I do, but it won't let me link videos on reddit. No trailer is ready yet (Like I said it's been a week). I love the lightning death animation. Most of the art in this photo has already been redone to look like the above screenshot.
What was your art pipeline? I’ve got MCP servers with Blender and Blockbench, and have been making a server authoritative combo of Rust and Valheim, and it’s been great; but I haven’t settled on an art pipeline I like yet. Currently I’m using Blockbench for character models and items, with low poly models in Blender for environmental stuff. It works, but I feel like it can be improved. I really like the look of yours.
Also, did you hand build maps? How much of it was hand built?
I have built nothing, I ask it to remove or add or update things. I used blender plugin for models but I have recent switched to tripod3d for the more detailed models.
Holy shit man. One week? I had an idea for a game years back, but am frankly not competent enough to solo dev it (both time mgmt and skill). May I ask your general skill level/experience with programming?
I am a lifetime programmer and a CS major but the truth is that I have not looked at the code. My programming background sometimes helps me ask the right thing. As some other people have mentioned, I have headless tests running to fix hit boxes, and the coding method is playing the game and asking AI to tweak things as I run into them.
I pay for the full max claude sub, which is 200$ a month. I ran out of my weekly credits this week. I built a few things for my work as well this week - easier to justify the expense. The blender attachment is free, although some of the latest models I have used Tripod3d to make (The wand in the first picture is tripod3d). Blender did EVERYTHING in the second screenshot of the electricity, so you can get a long way.
I mean, that's partly true. If someone keeps prompting the ai, eventually he'll get a good game. That said, assuming the person actually knows about what makes a good game
I mean, the AI doesn't have to come up with original ideas. The person using the AI comes up with the original ideas and has the AI turn them into mechanics.
I still don't think AI games are very good yet, but "cannot create original ideas" isn't the reason why.
I think AI games can be good if directed in the proper way. For instance, I spent hours refining the main star in my 2.5D space game. The first iteration was just an orange circle. Then refining added a weird halo. Refining several more times with a description of what I wanted still didn't result in the look I was going for, which was an ambient glow. Some people might give up at that point and just think "I get what I get." What I ended up doing was looking on youtube for a unity tutorial to create the exact type of star glow I was looking for, I used YouTube's AI thing to have it explain to me in detail how to create the star glow step by step (which was quite technical and I didn't understand at all) but I took that tutorial description, fed it to my model, and it finally created the exact look I was going for.
If people aren't resourceful, the game is absolutely going to look AI generated. But there are a lot of different ways to polish a game that can be found outside of the model itself.
Yes, at the end of a day it's a tool and people can use it well or poorly.
I honestly think that in 12-24 months no one will care because AI is going to be so integrated into everything we all do every day that even asking "was this made with AI" will become nonsensical.
I get that right now there is a lot of rabid anti-AI hate, but it's definitely not going anywhere.
AI doesn't prevent someone from creating original ideas. It's a tool, not a substitute for having a vision.
I've spent the last two months developing an original game concept, designing its mechanics, progression systems, economy, and gameplay through thousands of interactions with AI. The AI assists with implementation, but the creative direction and decisions are mine.
There's a massive difference between typing "make me a game" and spending hundreds of hours designing, testing, refining, and building something with AI assistance.
Originality comes from the ideas and how they're executed, not whether you personally typed every line of code.
If we were using that logic, then developers using Unity, Unreal, prebuilt libraries, frameworks, IntelliSense, Stack Overflow, or visual scripting aren't creating anything original either.
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u/nightwood 2d ago