I've seen several AAA studios are using AI, like COD 7. Marvel Rivals even disclosed that they use AI in their financial reportings and in pretty much all processes, like code, art, textures, etcetera.

Some games/companies using AI are Sony game studios, Square Enix, Epic Games (Fortnite) Tomb Raider, Ubisoft... you get the picture.

When i see indie dev's using AI, i noticed the reaction on platforms (like FB and Reddit) are vastly different. I was wondering if this double standard therefore is true?

What do you guys think?

___________

EDIT: Also here is my game Twilight Tavern, please wishlist if it looks like your type of game, I could use the luck 🍀 Thank youuu 😁

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5121150/Twilight_Tavern/

EDIT #2: I made a YouTube video about AI in game dev as well, tryna build my personal brand on unconventional takes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4hd6ivzNlg&t=483s

These are for Liliput, a Banished-inspired game set in a world of tiny people, found-object buildings and garden creatures.

I approve or reject the designs and give notes. Once a design is approved, the agents handle the modelling, texturing and checks. About 50 minutes per asset at the moment. Claude is doing the pipeline work, with image generation used for designs and texture paintovers. The models have to fit the game’s budgets. The beetle in the video is 876 triangles with four animation clips.

This is somewhere past iteration 20 of the pipeline itself. Feedback gets turned into instructions and checks for later builds. It still gets things wrong, but I’m spending more time on art direction and less on catching the same mistakes again.

FYI just because you use AI in your game, does not mean it is safe from AI cloner. If anything if AI can make your game, it can clone it

Detailed write-up + code. I’ve been messing around Claude for code-driven pixel art visual effects, here’s my learning so far:

• Treat code as clay, form your ideas on the go instead of aim for a one-shot. Ask your agent to generate many option as video records, then pick one, and repeat until it feels right.
• Just trust your eyes, if something looks off, make the effort to go on the round trips with the LLM, the quality bar is on you.
• Learn from 3D (Houdini in my case), films etc. they are very good reference to learn from. Play games with great VFX as well, for instance Path of Exile 2 is an insanely good ref.

PS: I’ve also put a bunch of effects source code files together in the write-up, feel free to take them as reference or feed them as context to your LLM.

Hey everyone! Back with another AutoSprite update. I've been working on this almost every day for close to a year now, and it's been pretty crazy seeing how far it's come.

I originally started building this because I always wanted an easier way to make characters for my own games. The idea was simple: take one character image, turn it into animations, and actually be able to play with it instead of spending hours putting spritesheets together.

Lately I've been really focused on isometric and 2.5D RPG games. Getting a character to look consistent while walking, attacking, and casting spells in 8 different directions is surprisingly difficult.

Some of the things I've added and improved recently:

• 8-direction isometric spritesheets for RPGs, ARPGs, and tactical games
• Better character consistency across different animations and directions
• Idle, walk, run, attack, spells, and custom animations
• Equipment and character customization workflows
• A playable browser preview so you can actually test your character
• MCP integration with Claude Code and Codex to help build games with your generated assets

My goal is still the same: one character image in, a complete playable character out.

It's definitely not perfect yet. Getting animations to loop smoothly, keeping equipment consistent, and making attacks look good from every angle are all things I'm still working on.

But I feel like we're getting closer to making it possible for anyone with an RPG idea to actually bring their characters to life.

You can try it here: https://autosprite.io

I'd love to hear what you guys think, especially anyone working on an isometric RPG. What's the biggest pain point you still have with character animations?

Thanks everyone for all the feedback over the past year. It's genuinely helped me figure out what to build next!

Hey everyone, I’m making free online casual games with AI tools. I’m looking to playtest other people’s free games

I want to learn from your experience and see what’s out there.

If you have a free browser/HTML5/casual game you’d like feedback on, drop the link and a short description below.

I’ll play it and reply with my feedback.

My 2d MMO Game engine. Sharing some screenshots from when i started the project to some more recent images. Looking for feedback and just general talk!

Do you know the game Needle In A Haystack Simulator and the dozens upon dozens of clones released these days? They made me think of developing a game where you have to find the original game among millions of clones. Obviously they will clone this one too, but anyway it was mostly fun and an experiment.

Title: Needle in a Haystack Simulator in a Haystack of Needle in a Haystack Simulators

The game was made entirely with AI. Specifically with Claude Code and ChatGPT’s Imagegen. All in less than 6 days.

A few numbers to give you an idea of the effort:
- developed in Unity (with MCP for Unity)
- 60 commits
- 34,000 lines of C# (I haven’t read a single one)
- music and sound effects synthesized by code (4,400 lines of code)
- 3D models made by Claude, generated by editor scripts
- 32 images generated by Claude via image_gen (Claude Code has access to the Codex CLI)
- A lot of SVGs generated by Claude for the gameplay
- The fonts are the only thing not created by AI!
- approximately 7 million tokens used (with Max 5x subscription)

The sessions (and related prompts) were very many. From the first prototype to the finished game it was continuous work for all 6 days. The changes to gameplay, graphics, and balancing were huge. In 6 days I was able to test lots of different options, looking for the feeling I liked best.

During the waits, sometimes even long ones, I did many other things on our “real” projects.

In the end, even for the Steam page, I had Claude do everything, through its internal browser. It configured and uploaded everything, all by itself.

I only used Opus 5.5, Max and Extra effort. Almost never reached the 5h limit.

It was all very fun!

Even the trailer was made by Claude!

If you have any questions, if you want any "development" details, feel free to ask.

Thanks.

Currently in early stages :)

I have tried recording gameplay myself and having AI edit it and also having AI record the gameplay and edit it all on its own.

Both lead to okayish results, but with both approaches I need many iterations to get something halfway decent. What are your experiences?

If I was to rip a game to Google Play Store, they require 2 weeks of 14 beta testers.

Is there a community that supports each other in this regard?

I pitted Opus5.5 low, medium, high, xhigh and max against each other, all using the same prompt without a reference image. All were allowed to use one sub-agent but surprisingly none did.

All were told to build a moody Godot 4.7 diorama of a cyberpunk alley, with rain slicked PBR surface, neon signs, bloom, volumetric fog, SDFGI, tone mapping, tile shift, depth of field, emissive signs, low angle hero shot. All agents were also instructed to use 3D Assets, and not to handroll any (not the actual prompt, just the summary).

Which one do you think did the best?

Hi, not sure if people are already using this, but I wanted to share a proof of concept I created recently combining AI video editing with pixel assets for cutscene creation. I gave Claude an initial prompt detailing the specifics of the setting in question, a planet from one of my games, and instructed it to use Remotion in conjunction with generated assets to make this video.

Claude created a plan with individual cuts and timings based on what I asked for, incorporated my feedback, and prepared mockups for the pixel art generation, then edited together the assets using Remotion. Each cut gets its own .tsx file and the score was built by Claude using Python.

My prompts were not particularly deep here:

"I want to have this cloud session create animated content using remotion, animated via javascript https://github.com/cth9191/animate, asset generation via pixellab.ai midjourney & chatgpt pro. The goal is to produce personal animations and video content. Multiple topics and genres will be covered, but the initial test project is to create a short animation with a backing audio track. More details after repo and dependencies are configured."

"https://github.com/remotion-dev/remotion

Providing a link to the remotion repo if needed"

and finally:

"For the test run, the setting is on a planet that is 100% covered in city. A megalopolis planet called New Calidonia. This animated intro sequence should demonstrate daily life on the planet, describing both the fantastical elements and the mundane. A dog man and a robot argue over a parking space, a massively hairy alien hangs laundry on a balcony, an empty playground is built around a hologram of a tree. Each shot should be simple, short, and have some camera movement involved. Pixel art aesthetic is mandatory."

I've been making games as a hobbyist for a while. To simplify my own workflow I built an app, and since it might be useful for you too, I turned the idea into a website.

In my opinion, the hardest and most time-consuming part of 2D game development is drawing sprites frame by frame. So I put together a toolset to make that easier: you can take a 3D model with its animations and render 2D pixel art sprites from any angle you like, then edit and test them with the other tools on the site. And it's completely free.

What you can do with it:

- **3D → pixel art sprites:** load GLB, GLTF, FBX or OBJ models with their textures and animations (Mixamo, Meshy AI, Sketchfab and Blender files open as they are), render 1, 4 or 8 directions in front, side, top or isometric view, add toon shading, outlines and palettes, then export a sprite sheet (+ JSON for Phaser / TexturePacker), a GIF or PNG frames

- **GIF & APNG frame extractor:** split animated GIFs and APNGs into PNG frames, or combine your images into a GIF, APNG or sprite sheet

- **Sprite sheet slicer:** cut sheets by cell size, columns × rows or automatic sprite detection, remove the background and export PNGs, a GIF or a JSON atlas

- **Pixel editor:** draw and animate sprites with layers, frames, onion skin and classic palettes (PICO-8, DB32, Endesga)

Everything runs in your browser - your files are never uploaded. No account, no watermark.

I'm still working on it and improving it, so your feedback means a lot to me - bugs, missing features, anything.

https://pixelspritefx.com

Tutorial video: https://youtu.be/s9dGCEobJjE

I've seen some posts asking about how to develop a game with AI and I think something like this might be helpful to some people starting.

I've started this one in the 22th of Oct with a 9-5 job and a baby. The game can be now completed, has an intro and ending, is all on my web if you want to test it along with a bunch of other projects https://goliathstudios.net/

Helpful stuff for a first iteration:

1. ask for a .bat file to play it, so you don't have to deal with cmd or others
2. For UI changes or art tweaks, ask him to present it in 'Artifacts' so you can edit them and talk to it about each of the images it creates
3. Give it references if you have any
4. Ask him for a Debug menu to iterate and a hotkey to give it feedback as you test: "pause the game, take a screenshot, let me write a comment."

For the intro and outro, covers, banners, etc., I used comfyUI with KREA and H3 minimax. You can ask Claude to set it up. I asked for artifacts there too, it presents me the characters first, then the first frames, finally the video. I left notes all the way. Music was also done this way

Trailer was made by Claude too, just recording old versions of the project.

Make it document things, so other projects you start can take advantage of the ones you've made already.

I'm not profiting on any of my projects, just focusing on learning right now. If you have any questions please let me know

I've been working on my own game for 27 days using AI. I started with GPT-6 Astra but later switched to GPT-6.1 Sol because it uses around 5–10 times less of my usage limit while giving me similar results for most tasks. One of the biggest challenges was optimization. At first, 400 monsters could drop the game to 5 FPS, but after almost two weeks of testing and improving the code, it can now handle up to 1,000 monsters. The visuals and animations also need a lot of manual work. It's still an early prototype, but here's a short look at my progress! I'd love to hear your feedback, especially from anyone else using AI for game development.
Full video: https://youtu.be/mJx_IWZdCPo

Hey everyone,

By now, some of you might recognize me or my game. I'm the solo developer behind Grim Reach Idle (https://store.steampowered.com/app/4915450/Grim_Reach_Idle/) , a (currently) singleplayer, scape-like dark fantasy idle RPG. What a tongue twister! I'm a software developer from germany and have only been developing games for a few months now. You read that right, i actually created a game, with the help of AI, that keeps players around for hundreds (now thousands!) of hours. You could argue "That's only because it's an idler" and yes, that's fair, but it's still a great achievement in my book!

First of all, thank you

I just want to thank everybody who gave my game a shot. I feel incredibly privileged to be able to say that my game has reached this amount of success. Some might think it's small or meaningless, but for my first release, this absolutely blew past my expectations. I poured my heart and soul into designing the perfect idler for myself, the way i wanted it to be. Seeing other people enjoy that is honestly a little hard to put into words. So sincerely, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. You're fulfilling this man-child's dream :)

I also wanted to share some of the things i learned while developing Grim Reach Idle and keeping it running after release.

"How did you market your game?"

This is the question i get the most. Honestly, this is my weakest skill by far, probably like many of us. I didn't really market my game at all. I put it up, waited until i could release it and... i just did. No planning, i didn't look at the wishlists, i honestly didn't care at the time. All i wanted was to make a good game and see if it reached the right people.

Does that mean you should do it the same way? Absolutely not. With what i know now about wishlists, conversion rates and all that, i'd say wishlists are very important to give your game a chance of getting noticed by the algorithm. What i'm trying to say is: don't stress so much about wishlists and numbers that you lose sight of making a good game you're proud of.

Project scope

Another problem i see here all the time. Alot of posts here are about projects that seem way too big for a single developer. And you might say "But you can't know if that's too much for someone!" You're right, i can't. But i do think a lot of people will burn out before they even finish half of what they planned. If you're making your first game, do something simpler. Ask yourself: "Do i have the tools and skills to take this game from 0 to 100?" And if the answer is no, start smaller.

I would love to make a 3D RPG in my own universe. Who wouldn't? But do i have reliable tools to make everything that would need? Not yet. 3D is still iffy with AI, and animations can be quirky if you aren't using pre-made assets. Having 5–6 nice Meshy models is cool, but can you REALLY scale that up to hundreds of NPCs? Will they look good together? Will the rigging work properly? Those are things you need to figure out before you've already sunk months into it. Do something simple so you can learn the fundamentals of good game design. Focus less on pretty graphics, try finding your own artstyle and make something that feels like yours.

The last 10% are the hardest

This is so disgustingly true that i want to throw up. I have three games in development, with Grim Reach Idle being the only one released so far, and i've felt this with every project. You'll chew away at those last 10% for weeks and months on end. Thats why i really recommend building your game in a way that makes things easy to revisit and change. Good architecture matters a lot, especially when you're working with AI and paying for token usage. You'll be coming back to things more often than you think.

And to everyone who needs to hear it: don't give up

Don't do this just for money or fame. You need passion, and you need to believe in what you're making. Keep learning, try to get better and push yourself to build something you're happy with. For me, making games used to be one of those things i'd dream about without knowing how to actually do it. Now i've released one, and people are spending their time playing it. That still feels a bit unreal. There are so many creative people who have ideas but were missing the skills to bring them to life. Being able to finally do that means a lot to me, and i'm sure i'm not the only one.

And fuck all the Anti-AI shit going on :-)

- Adhavar

2021 : “Your game ideas have no value and no one wants to hear them.”

2026 : “Everyone stop posting your game ideas immediately!”

With the holidays coming up what has been your favorite/ most fun holiday item you've added to your game?

I’m a researcher who studies folktales computationally. Over the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with games as a way to present research. This one, Sagenland, was built with Claude Code (Opus 5.5, high effort) and draws on the Folktale Database of the Low Countries (https://www.verhalenbank.nl): real Dutch legends about devils at crossroads, witte wieven on the heath, will-o’-the-wisps, and neighbours who bewitch your cows.

You’re a 19th/20th-century-style folktale collector with twelve days and a notebook, travelling between villages on an old regional map. On your travels you meet all kinds of people: A shepherd “has seen things”, an old man who knows everything is ill and may die before you reach him, a shy teller says nothing until you name a tale. Ask about witches too soon and the visit is over.

At the end, the game uses your notebook to estimate how many stories you missed, the way researchers estimate what an archive is missing. Then it shows you the real number. The estimate always falls short, because you didn’t collect at random. You went back to good tellers, followed tips, and asked about what interested you. That’s exactly the bias real collectors built into the archives we study today.

https://www.karsdorp.io/sagenland

hey guys, im still in high school and literally have zero coding background, but i always wanted to try making a game. i thought you needed a CS degree to even touch physics, but i spent the last few weeks using AI to help me build a prototype called Barnaby.

it’s a goofy 1940s slapstick FPS where you play as a 300lb mouse swinging between skyscrapers with sticky cheese strings the swinging physics were a total nightmare to fix through prompting, and the AI kept breaking my scripts once the file got too big, but seeing it actually work made me really want to learn real programming now.

its super rough and full of bugs, but i put a free early alpha build on itch if anyone wants to check it out or drop some feedback:https://vanzim2.itch.io/barnaby

any tips from real devs on how to stop LLMs from overwriting good code when fixing bugs? still super new to all this so any advice helps!

Hello everyone,

i’ve been interested in game dev for years and was always trapped in tutorial hell. Finished one after another, never actually developing something from scratch. Once i had a foundation, it was really fun, but getting that foundation was really hard for me.

Fast forward to now and i have tried out GPT Plus with Sol 6.1 and i am blown away by the results. Working on a simple 3D-Tower Defense Game in Godot and i can use Codex to generate rigged models in Blender, import new scripts and generate Artworks as guide for the generated models.

I just work on some private projects, nothing commercial so far.

I have heard, that the undisputed king in coding is Claude with Opus 5.5. But, its also worse ar generating artworks and models.

So does it make that big of a difference? Is it worth switching over or should i just stay at GPT?

Thanks yall for your input!