28 Days, 724 Commits: What Making a Game With AI Actually Taught Me
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I built a game in 28 days with AI (Claude Opus 5.5 in the Godot engine) without writing a single line of code. Here's the honest version: what the AI did, what I did, what players taught me, and why getting anyone to play it was the hardest part.
▶ Play Hollowlight free in your browser: https://hollowlightgame.com
▶ itch.io: https://hollowlightgame.itch.io/hollowlight
▶ Discord (feedback, patch notes): https://discord.gg/UtCTyW7vR6
If you play a full run (about an hour), I'd love to hear what you think. Comments here, on itch or on Discord all get read.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The numbers: 28 days, 724 commits
0:31 Who I am
1:26 The honest part: what AI did vs. what I did
2:06 What is Hollowlight?
2:38 Where the idea came from
3:31 The first prompt
4:26 Lesson 1: Measure everything (telemetry)
6:57 Lesson 2: "It feels like two games"
8:21 Lesson 3: The reward screen matters
9:49 Lesson 4: Game feel is 100 tiny things
11:10 Lesson 5: Cut things you like
12:35 What it's like making a game with AI
14:21 It's hard to get anyone to play
15:04 Marketing is the hardest part
16:09 Play it free
ABOUT THE GAME
Hollowlight is a survivors-like × tower defense × twin-stick shooter. By day you gather, build and fight on the Surface. By night you defend your town in the Hollow as monsters pour down the lanes. 20 nights, 10 bosses, free in your browser.
WHO MADE WHAT
Code, pixel art and sound effects: Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic), directed by me.
Soundtrack, design, playtesting and balance: me.
All in-game art is pixel art drawn in code. No AI image models.
#gamedev #indiedev #devlog #godot #vibecoding
▶ Play Hollowlight free in your browser: https://hollowlightgame.com
▶ itch.io: https://hollowlightgame.itch.io/hollowlight
▶ Discord (feedback, patch notes): https://discord.gg/UtCTyW7vR6
If you play a full run (about an hour), I'd love to hear what you think. Comments here, on itch or on Discord all get read.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The numbers: 28 days, 724 commits
0:31 Who I am
1:26 The honest part: what AI did vs. what I did
2:06 What is Hollowlight?
2:38 Where the idea came from
3:31 The first prompt
4:26 Lesson 1: Measure everything (telemetry)
6:57 Lesson 2: "It feels like two games"
8:21 Lesson 3: The reward screen matters
9:49 Lesson 4: Game feel is 100 tiny things
11:10 Lesson 5: Cut things you like
12:35 What it's like making a game with AI
14:21 It's hard to get anyone to play
15:04 Marketing is the hardest part
16:09 Play it free
ABOUT THE GAME
Hollowlight is a survivors-like × tower defense × twin-stick shooter. By day you gather, build and fight on the Surface. By night you defend your town in the Hollow as monsters pour down the lanes. 20 nights, 10 bosses, free in your browser.
WHO MADE WHAT
Code, pixel art and sound effects: Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic), directed by me.
Soundtrack, design, playtesting and balance: me.
All in-game art is pixel art drawn in code. No AI image models.
#gamedev #indiedev #devlog #godot #vibecoding
@HollowlightGame
If you try Hollowlight, tell me how far you got and where you stopped. hollowlightgame.com/
5 likes
@saransaran9185
Something you ought add to your game is the ability to submit a screenshot from in game + a text field to provide feedback.
Maybe F2, or a clickable button, takes a screenshot and exposes a text field for the user to type, the two get saved as a ticket. It's hard to remember all the feedback at the end of a game session, so having the ability to provide feedback as it comes up would help you get more of it. I've done this for my own projects, and it's made bug fixes way easier.
You should look them over before handing anything to an agent, though.
10 likes
@AetherXIV
I played it till night three. I can tell you put a lot of work into it. This totally isn't my kind of game, but I did try it out.
3 likes
@rakly347
Downsides can be upsides. For example in 20 minutes till dawn, making the reload slower, will make whirlwind last longer of the Cyclone Sword (it lasts as long as the reload takes).
Lowering the ammo count will make reload trigger faster. Lowering to 0 ammo = perpetual whirlwind.
There's even a downside that makes it you can't move at all any more, but then you also have dodging triggered effects, buffs while not moving, etc.
5 likes
@Ardaria_survival
fire bro
@ClandestineMerkaba
Looks really smooth for one of these style of games.
@Buztroy
awesome work, i'll try it out for sure. how did you do the art? the artstyle is awesome
3 likes
@jtms1200
great video... really resonated with me as I am basically in the same situation (software engineering day job, lifelong desire to make games instead of business software). Just one tiny bit of feedback to help your future videos: I thought it was my headphones or pre-amp at first, but there is a very subtle but noticeable buzzing/feedback/artifact sound or in this video's audio that really makes it hard to listen to. Sounds like maybe an unshielded cable or bad cable somewhere along your recording chain.
@louiemussett123xyz
Played the game for a few minutes. Its good but a bit overwhelming at the beginning. Instead of making the player do a bunch of actions at the beginning and buiding a bunch of stuff and collecting resources, they should just begin with a pre set of things in place already for the first run. For both Day and night cycles.
I would make the cycle super quick and easy. Complete both day and night within a minute or two. Then on the second cycle have the player essentially loose, their initial base is destroyed and they have to start from scratch, then start introducing the build mechanics. Thats how you get a player hooked.
I felt at many points at just giving up since there were too many things happening at the beginning. And this is even with the massive effort I can see to make it easier for a new comer.
1 likes
@NEEDaFIX1
Really honest video, thanks for making it. “My job became taste and playtesting” matches my experience exactly. I’m a CNC programmer who can’t code, and I build browser games with Claude. This week I moved my AI Browser Game Jam 5 entry into Godot with Claude working inside the editor, and then I saw Hollowlight is in the same jam. The telemetry idea is something I hadn’t thought of: half of players gone within 60 seconds is brutal, but at least you know where to look. And the overtime fix made me laugh, because players will always find the 7-minute XP farm. I’ll play Hollowlight properly and leave my notes on itch.
@RealNishantha
this is so good make more vidoes!!!
1 likes
@kleffestroopwafel
Great video and thanks for your insights! Marketing is probably tough also as the rogue like / survival / 2d is basically what every Ai coded games these days are. Most important thing is that you learned about the process and can now broaden your scope for next one.
My honest opinion is that people now are in like a shell shock state about Ai in games. But Ai isn't going away any more, we humans are just to lazy to go back to manual coding. Give it a few years once the boom has settled and people have adjusted. I think the reception about Ai in games is going to be different then. It's probably even going to be so easy to create games that triple A game devs will be a thing of the past: why spend 300M on a game for 6 years when a small indy team with Ai can do the same...
2 likes
@YehielCertner
Played until the first boss, it was fun! i like the idea that you have the auto shoot like most survivors and a none auto shooter you can upgrade, the collector by day and defender by night is also cool. some remarks/idea's
- maybe just let the player explore by day and leave the fighting to the night or mostly to the night, i didn't travel far since the enemies come to you and the level is very dense of stuff to pick
- the UI is too much there's so many stats and pickups i just didn't bother to look or understand it, maybe hide some of it in popup screens or just streamline it so the players could manage all the info
- the bits of story you added is cool maybe give it more room, make the days longer so you could explore and learn more
- visually, i found the monsters a bit generic, they didn't stand from the background, so much color and clutter, its very confusing and makes people not stay much
all in all you got a cool game which need more polish and some level design, good luck!
1 likes
@Axtro5
The game already runs fine on my iPhone 15 so please add touch controls, here's what I recommend:
1- player shouldn't be able to zoom in by pinching or double clicking the game like a regular webpage.
2- when touching and holding the screen that shouldn't activate text selection.
3- touch controls ui should match game aesthetics not be generic.
4- virtual joystick should not follow the player's finger, it should be stuck in place of where the player held, then resets to original place or disappear when removing finger.
1 likes
@ObbeVermeij
Tried the game for a bit. It looks very cool for 1 month. Well done.
I think it threw too many things at me a bit too quickly. I never got to a point where I was having fun or understanding everything and I had already gotten a bunch of power ups.
But the main thing is that it's hard to convince people to spend time on getting good at it. It feels like a fairly generic game. Maybe it needs some hook to make it interesting.
2 likes
@ryanweatherby3873
Headline: Fun concept, something good here to build on.
Basic Tutorial: Overlay of button mapping and actions w/ some text box direction to get started.
Surface: Visual indicator of enemy intensification from time spent on the surface. Day/night or countdown timer/bar/clock. Better visual indicator of Hollow entrance and action button to enter, larger hit box around the Hollow entrance to access easier. Lost lots of health just being a couple pixels off the entrance.
Hollow: Much appreciated the user driven Start to the round after the bullet hell on the surface. Separate tutorial for Hollow, some basic tips already present. Did not know i could select a placed tower for a while.
Shop: Should be more obvious to the player what areas are available in the shop, more distinct visually w/ text label (?). Build stations and mechanics are overwhelming at the start - good place for meta progression based unlocks and minimal availability to start.
First minigame and boos fight were good twist, Difficulty feels like it's too easy and i should've died many times but didn't. Edit: there are multiple difficulty settings
Sound: A+
Great video, was especially relevant as i am creating a roguelike deck-builder with AI and first commit was Sep26. Live demo on Itch.io Not Your Keys. Would appreciate any feedback and would be interested in working together on the music and SFX, i had AI do those as well and it's a weak spot for sure.
https://not-your-keys.itch.io/not-your-keys-roguelike-dec…
@jaimemontes9498
The game is fun, has charm (the music is great!) and the shooting feels great. IMO there are 2 main problems:
- Pacing: It throws a lot of crap to you really fast. "Here's a town, now go out and collect, now shoot, now pick an upgrade, now TD". Getting this part right is gonna be real hard because the game has a lot of features, for starters I'd try to remove as much as non essential text and UI from the screen on the FTUE.
- Readability: I think the game's pixel art kinda works but there's a lot of noise in the screen. UI is way too cramped, too many panels, too much text, there's not a clear "here's what you need to pay attention now" flow.
I played up to completing the first day, so I can't really tell if the genre combination works or not but it did feel somewhat disconnected. I didn't understood what's the point of mixing the genres, why putting survivors + tower defense + bullet hell, makes a better game than playing them separately? Only if you have a real answer other than "I just really like those genres" you'll be able to appeal to an audience outside of the intersection you mention.
You put together a lot of features and they work, that's already a big step! Now you gotta craft an engaging experience for your players and that takes a long time, keep iterating and you'll get there. Keep it up!
@pooglechen3251
This feels like intro to AI game design class at Digipen :)
Q: When do you start sharing your game/demo with the public for feedback? When it's playable for 5 min?
@Dichtbringer
Ok i just played a bit and killed the first boss. As someone who usually plays neither tower defense nor bullet hell, there is still a lot thrown at the player at once.
My recommendation would be - pause the game for tutorial tooltips (make this optional so it can be turned off).
In general, there is often stuff popping up that just gets in the way and more criticially usually while you are running around hitting keys or clicking, you can just randomly click it away and have no idea what you just did. This happened to me more than once. Like level up, beating a boss opening some screen, as i was spamming mouse click and space and other stuff, i just kept missing things repeatedly, very grating.
Also whenever something pops up, aside from preventing it being immediatly dismassable by accident, not only should the game pause consistently, but ideally whatever does not belong to that popup should be greyed out. Right now it is hard to even see where the tooltips and stuf pops up. Like greying out everything thats not important for that screen would alleviate that.
It is also really not made clear how skills work at all. Like i'm still not quite sure, i guess I just have 4 skills at a time but they all passively do things (somewhat depending on what i'm doing, like in which direction they shoot or whatever). The entire combat and skill system needs better explanation.
Also, overall I think both night and daylight, but especially daylight sections are too short. Like there is so much stuff going on in the overworld but there is literally zero time to like get a lay of the land, the (very annoying) timer that tells you to go home pops up basically immediatly. At the same time you are hit with an incomprehensible enemy variety, all of which do their own thing, some telegraph attacks, some are somewhat immune until like flared or shots just pass through them, and there is so many of them at once you really cant apply any sort of strategy or focus on "dangerous" targets first because as a new player you have absolutely zero idea what any of these do and how to effecitvely counter them. My idea would be to sorta lock parts of the overmap at first, reduce enemy variety in early game drastically (both in over and undermap), introduce new enemies one at a time, make everything go slower and take longer, more repetition of everything (can just add days to compensate) - for veterans there can be rush mode restorign like current progression.
@aspectxiv
Thanks for sharing your experience! I watched the whole video and played til about night 3.
The best feedback I can give right now is to try and improve the UI. There's just so much going on. I've found that you can't really trust AI to make UI decisions or recommendations and any time you give it free reign it will add a bunch of eyebrow text everywhere.
Are you on the Max 5x tier?
How has your experience been managing usage limits throughout the month?
Do you know Godot at all or are you letting Claude handle that, too?
1 likes