I’m completely out of a job—being 35 hit me like a death blow… So I figured, why not just throw caution to the wind and mess around with making a game using AI!
A while back, I jumped on the bandwagon to make ultra-casual mini-games. The development cycle was short, but there was basically no future for individual developers—this space is totally monopolized by big studios running ads. Don’t even bother thinking about it!
If you’re interested in how I developed those ultra-casual mini-games, click on my profile and find the post titled “I Bought Game Code and Made This Much Money by Launching It Quickly!”
After some painful reflection, I decided to switch lanes—to make a game actually for people who don’t have time to play games!
- I chose the idle game genre! Let’s be real, office workers only have fragmented “slacking time”—being able to play it in the background is a must.
- I went with pixel art! Assets are either a few dozen yuan a set, or I just toss the request to AI to generate. The cost is rock bottom.
- 2D + simple logic = fast development!
The game’s goal is simple: let 996 office workers keep leveling up even when they close the game, so they feel a sense of progress every day. (Lately, I’ve noticed there are more and more Windows desktop idle games on Steam—they’re blowing up!)
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It’s been over a month since I posted that update. Now I’ve finally cranked out a basic version with core gameplay. Fellow devs, scan the QR code above to try it out and give me some feedback!
Looking back, here are my thoughts on AI-related issues I ran into:
- AI can’t generate the animations I want. Even if it does, they’re absolutely terrible.
- AI works for some basic logic, but once things get a bit complex or require more customization, it starts messing up. I often tried to cut corners—watching shows while letting AI write code, handing over simple integration tasks to it. But it just gave me garbage in return. So here’s how I use it now: I have it mimic modules I’ve written before to implement entire functions—and it actually does a decent job with that. Then I have it make some adjustments. Finally, for the finishing touches that are hard to describe in words, I take over manually. I’m done dealing with that useless AI.
- All those people hyping AI say you can make games easily even if you don’t know how to code. That’s total clickbait from marketing accounts—they’re just hyping it up to scam people. From my experience: yes, you can make a game without coding, but it’s as miserable as eating dirt.
- The game’s balance design is a huge headache. I want to use AI for it, but I have no clue where to start. Any experienced devs out there who can teach me?
#IndieGameDev #AIGeneratedGames #PixelArt #IdleGames #OfficeSlackingTools #LifeAfterQuittingWithoutANewJob #GameDevDiary #NicheGames
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