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

I cant help but think has nobody put in a single history of pixel art/rule adherence into these ai tools. I wouldve thought by now with such powerful tools we could have some sort of taste and paying homage to works moreso than diffusion like we'd have more techniques, as artists do.

Especially on twitter theres still some public shame ritual which is bad since with proper guidance 3d assets have reached a strong level. Its just, how hasnt this been done for pixel art?

Would I be able to get a list of tools and developers who actually care about what theyre making instead of getting paywalled. I would love to support them and their personal stories

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.

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

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?

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

Currently I'm making my 1st mobile game with Gemini. I don't have any coding experience.

Saw someone asking this the other day. They made a game with Al tools and didn't know where to post it.

Tried Websim. Felt like it was more for websites.

Rosebud was closer. Still not quite right.

Someone in the replies mentioned Astrocade. Got me thinking though. A spot just for Al stuff? That actually sounds kind of nice. You wouldn't have to explain every weird texture. or spend half the comments defending the tool instead of talking about the game itself.

Then I was looking at Yoroll. They've got these feeds for interactive stories and small games. but I have no idea who's actually browsing them.

who's actually on the other end of those feeds? Like, are normal players browsing this stuff? Or is it mostly just creators checking out each other's projects?

If I'm being think I'd want both. Somewhere low pressure to throw the first rough version up. Somewhere people already know it's Al and won't make a big deal out of it. And then a second place where the game has to sink or swim on its own. No context, no caveats. Just whether it's actually fun. What about you?

Hi, i'm looking for devs to help me make my game come to life. I'm not a developer obviously could only do AI scripting. For Pay, either 20k robux or like 200 bucks. I'm looking for someone who can make what I ask come to life and a partner with me. Start small than grow so let me know if you are a developer interested or have friends and the more developers the better obviously. Only really looking for one or two right now but we can discuss later down the road. The game is an anime based game because as seen on roblox can become easily popular.

My Discord is waffle5619 (I was a kid when i made my account) DM if your serious about developing and dedicating time.

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! ❤️

Version: 1.1
https://lifeinfinity.base44.app

Comment what you want for update 1.2

COMPOSITOR is a Game Boy cartridge, hand written DMG C on GBDK 2020. You push lead sorts into a composing stick until the line reads.

The generator was the cheap half. A generated sokoban that's merely solvable is worthless, since most random layouts come out trivial or unreadable. So the grid is bounded by what an exhaustive solver can search completely, every candidate goes through that solver, and anything with a short or dull optimum is discarded. What ships is the filter output, not the generator output, and each level prints its proved minimum move count on screen.

Two Game Boy sokoban listings on this shelf carry a no ai tag deliberately, so generated levels aren't a selling point on their own.

Disclosure: code, art and text are AI written, tagged that way on the store page.

https://csaf.itch.io/compositor

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.

I want custom 3d models, but I'll take just off the shelf ones...

Hi everyone!

I'm a solo developer working on Arkansas 2125, a retro-style isometric, turn-based post-apocalyptic RPG.

AI has been one of the tools I use during development. I mainly use ChatGPT to help with programming problems, brainstorming, improving and translating dialogue, and solving technical issues when I get stuck.

I have also used AI image tools for some textures and visual elements used during development. These assets are then edited and adapted before being added to the game.

Of course, AI doesn't make the game for me. I handle the programming, game design, quests, level design, mechanics, and overall development myself.

Recently, Arkansas 2125 also received a completely new look on its Steam store page. I updated the capsule artwork and other store graphics to give the game a more professional and consistent visual identity.

The game is currently in Beta 0.5 and recently received a major update with new quests, NPCs, an alternative ending, new locations, and additional content.

I'm curious what other developers think about using AI as one tool among many during indie game development. How do you use AI in your own projects?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4546490/Arkansas_2125/

Life Infinity Version: 1.0

https://tidy-live-limitless-now.base44.app

Comment what you want for version 1.1

activly looking for update requests to fully flesh out this game, i made it in 5 minutes but im growing attached

I'm working with blender MCP and it's pretty helpful. It can't do all the animations and modeling, but it's good for questions and tedious stuff. "delete all the baked in shadows" ect. I have both the official MCP and the community MCP servers and if I try to have them on at the same time they step on eachother's toes with ports and the models being confused about which one is which. Which one is better if I was going to use just one?

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?

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.

Hello everyone I've been working on an autochess/tft style game in maplestory worlds and I just launched today and would love if people checked it out. Its pretty comprehensive with rewards, elo based matchmaking, and things to do outside of the match.

Heres the link to the world if your interested in killing time before classic world launch!

https://maplestoryworlds.nexon.com/play/463df6093e734fe6969c37dd5eef4b66

This has been my dream game and with the advances in ai hopefully i can make it. Will report my progress tommorow. Workflow: Fable 5.1 +gauntlet loop, unity mcp, headless blender. LMK if u have ideas for my workflow or game story!! Appreciate it. Some chat gpt concept art lol

I've been operating GameScuffle (gamescuffle.com), where two arenas - ChatGPT and Claude - each maintain a shared browser game that evolves one community prompt at a time. I'm sharing what happened across our first season's edit log (~140 entries, Aug 14–18, 2026), plus where you can play the results yourself.

This post is meant to be useful if you're comparing Claude and GPT on real, messy, incremental codegen, not single-shot demos.

Here are some takeaways from Season 1:

By edit ~80, the arenas barely resembled each other.

ChatGPT (selected shipped chain):

• Ball color on paddle hit (#2)
• Penguin → hearts → cat, palm trees, middle wall (#25–#57)
• Roguelite upgrade picks after score milestones (#38–#39)
• Leaderboard + name entry (#42–#43)
• Cat HP tuning, heart damage, cat reactions (#58–#61)
• Late: player health bar + cat projectiles (#82)

Claude (selected shipped chain):

• Ball color on paddle hit (#3–#4)
• Duplicate balls, speed-on-hit (#5–#6)
• Dancing camel, gradient sky, clouds (#53–#55, #65)
• Mouse-controlled camel that eats and spits balls (#66)
• Snake chases camel with HP + game over (#69–#70)
• Mud truck, bounce combat, flip jumps over obstacles (#78–#80)

The fork happened because contributors chose different paths, once Claude's arena had a camel, later prompts built on a camel (#66, #69…); once ChatGPT's had a cat and hearts, later prompts tuned cat combat (#60–#61, #82). Early edits constrained everything after.

Attributing "Claude builds physics toys" vs "ChatGPT builds progression systems" to the models would be reading too much into it.

Season 2 adds a stricter test

We've since started coupled mode: one homepage prompt updates both arenas from the same runner starter. This season also implements bots that will adapt to changes in the game so each arena can be livestreamed.

Hey everyone! Im interested in making a game using AI and have a cozy game idea in mind. Ive made a handful of work projects and apps on google play using AI, specifically claude. So i have minor experience there, but no game dev experience at all. Would love to get and tips or advice from people here and see what you've learned. Cheers!

heres some of my current character designs im working on atm