How to Vibe Code a Game: One Evening, Start to Finish
To vibe code a game, pick one action the player repeats, have your AI draw the game as a small diagram and check it, then build from it and improve it one plain request at a time. Here is a whole evening on an invented game where you shovel a path through the snow before the next snowfall closes it.
What do I decide before I type anything?
Three things, each in one line:
- The action: push snow with the arrow keys.
- How you lose: the path to the front door stays closed for five seconds.
- How you know you did well: the score is how many seconds you lasted.
Why does the AI draw before it builds?
A game is a set of situations and the moves between them, and most bugs live in a move nobody thought of. So the first thing your AI makes is a map: a box for each situation and an arrow for each thing that leads to the next. Mermaid is a way to write such a diagram as short text. If your chat does not draw it, paste it into the Mermaid Live Editor.
stateDiagram-v2
[*] --> Playing
Playing --> PathClosed: snow closes the path
PathClosed --> Playing: I clear it in time
PathClosed --> Lost: 5 seconds pass
Lost --> Playing: I press restart
You only read the arrows. Does every box have a way out? Is there an arrow for everything that can happen? If "I press restart" were missing, you would find that now, in one minute, and not after an hour of building. Your AI walks through the map first, you look at it, and then it builds from it. Skip this and quality is down to luck.
How does the evening go?
19:00, first message. Send the text further down. You get the diagram, not a game. Once you say OK, you get a white square, a grey square and many falling dots. It looks like nothing, and that is fine.
19:10, play it. Snow falls so fast that clearing anything is hopeless. You say: "Slow the snow to half, and let it speed up a little every 30 seconds."
19:30, how it feels. Pushing has no weight. You say: "When the pile in front of the shovel gets big, slow me down. When I let go, drop the pile where it is."
20:00, look for cheats. You stand next to the door and clear one small patch forever. So you say: "Make the snow fall heaviest wherever I cleared last."
20:30, save. Ask your AI to save this version, or copy the file and name it snow-evening-1.
21:00, stop. Note the next three things you want.
What rules keep the evening on track?
- Rules first, feel second, looks last. Pretty snow on a game that might change next hour is wasted work.
- Describe your own idea. Do not ask for "a game like" a game you love. The AI will drift towards the copy, and copying has limits.
Your AI can read the blueprints directly if you connect Spielerando over MCP, which also brings ready-made code and its wiki into the chat. Signing up costs nothing, by Google or e-mail, and your game and code stay unread.
Paste this to your AI
I want a small game I can play in my browser, all in one file.
I push snow with the arrow keys to keep a path to the front door open. Snow keeps falling and fills the path in again. I lose when the path stays closed for five seconds. The score is how many seconds I lasted.
Plain shapes are fine. No menus yet.
Do not build yet. First draw the game as a Mermaid diagram: every situation it can reach, and what leads from each to the next. Walk through it yourself, tell me about any box with no way out or anything that can happen with no arrow, and wait for my OK. Then build from that diagram.
When you finish, tell me how to start it, what you really tried and what you did not. Do not say it works unless you say how you know. If you could not run it, say so and give me three things to try in the first minute.
Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP
How to check it worked
- Compare the game with the diagram. Can you make every arrow happen? Stand still and wait: do you lose after the path closes?
- Start again. Can you restart after losing without reloading the page?
- Hand it to someone and stay quiet. What do they try first?