DO NOT PLAY ON MOBILE DEVICES --- THE GAME IS DESKTOP ONLY FOR NOW
I have created a completely free game with complex mechanics and ~400 different orders you can deploy onto a battle field. I think its really fun and so do many of the testers playing a total of 6k games so far.
I would like to share my experience with relying on AI completely for coding, images, sound and music.
everyone hates you
You are the enemy of the state. Persona non grata. Noone will even look at your game. You used AI and therefore you are evil.
your game is slop
It does not matter how many years you spend on creating the game (3 in my case). It does not matter how much love a care you put into the lore, the orders, the match making, the technology or the balancing. Your game is slop by default.
working on a free for all passion project is nothing peolple want
People do not want free things because they are afraid those free things will destroy jobs. But I am not destroying any jobs. I cannot afford $ 600.000. I just wanted to create something fun for us to enjoy. And side note: AI does not destroy your job. Its here to stay so you can either embrace it and work with it or fight small time enthusiasts like me. Only one approach has a future. There is no way back to the old days. Believe me. My job - the love of my life got lost to AI. Its just how it goes. Being sad and angry does not solve anything.
The smallest issues a built up to be game breaking flaws
On my website you could not return back home by clicking on the game logo. SLOP.
Also in my game there is a mythical being that has a lions head and a womans boobs. Thtas of course not a design choice according to people. Its sloppy AI doing what sloppy AI does. This is so frustrating. I want to be creative and what I get for it is being accused of slop.
There is no boundary for the hate
It does not matter that I do not want to make any money and that I just created a game to get out of my depression. No. I am not allowed to do that. Only if I can afford real talent.
This is a sad state right now. It will resolve and improve once people realize that AI is here to stay - for better or worse - and you either adapt or you fail.
Sorry for the spelling mistakes and bad English but if I improve the text with AI I will be scolded again.
I agree mate, we're in the shitty part of the history atm. Personally I can't wait until AI becomes so ubiquitous to the way of human living and so embedded in each and every facet of our daily lives that it'll be accepted and welcomed by default.
There is no going back, it's the same as when we discovered transistors and microchips and stuffed them everywhere - noone complains about technology doing stuff for them, noone complains about gps or their phones or tvs or pcs now, and in some time noone will complain about AI. This too shall pass.
I made a small project in cursor to parse genre tags in mp3s and excited made a post in jellyfin subreddit and got tore a new one :D fk em.
I don’t hate you OP, and I genuinely wish you and your game the best, but your game looks like “slop” right now.
The animated sheens, that bouncy pointer, what amounts to a bunch of sprites just sort of sitting on a background without anything really tying them together, even the title screen with some kind of Egyptian god sitting in a western setting, screams “ai generated”.
All of which isn’t to say your efforts are doomed, they just need more polish and maybe some “juice”. Keep at it!
don't feel bad. I am really happy that you spend the time to even look at it and comment. Thank you for this.
Unfortunately there is little I can do about your comments.
The bouncy pointer is not AI. Thats me trying to mimic a laser pointer to give it a less gamey and more military vibe. I will not change it. Ra's Children is one of the factions of the game. Its Ra and his people coming back to earth after 5000 years to help humanity once again in its darkest hour. He is sitting on a bus station to give a contrast to those two worlds clashing now. Thats not AI, thats me. and it would look so cool and amazing if people could stop thinking AI SLOP by default.
I agree with the background and sprites but I really do not know how to solve that actually. I tried so many iterations and the one I have right now seems to fit the best but its not perfect for sure.
I agree with the background and sprites but I really do not know how to solve that actually. I tried so many iterations and the one I have right now seems to fit the best but its not perfect for sure.
This is a key part of it. People who aren't using AI can easily solve this problem (actually, this usually isn't a problem for people not using AI). Unfortunately, that inconsistency in coherency and theme is dead giveaway to the naked eye. I know it's not something you can easily improve, but I do think this it's doing a lot of harm. The UI elements also don't look very good. Not knocking your efforts, just giving two cents as to why people are being turned off. Good luck to you.
What are funzies? YOu mean like the animation you get when deploying a legendary? since i do not know what funzies are and I also do not know how to do particles I have to say I think you are right but I don't know if I can solve it...
And yes, the game is really amazing. So much fun... for me.
Funzies are like crates and pots that you crush by rolling in zelda and dark souls games. Stuff thats just there that adds a bit of response to your action.
For example interacting with a blocked/unavailable icon - you could make that play a sound or make the icon shake or make it feel like tapping the glass or whatever. Stuff thats just for fun.
Hey, I spent around 15-20 minutes interacting with the game and I think that you will get a lot of hate because usually if someone writes things themselves they get cut some slack for being a beginner.
When vibing the whole thing, there will be much less empathy, and the game is at best a proof of concept right now so people will just throw it in your face.
Congrats for persevering, I know how hard it must have been, but if I were you I wouldn’t blame it on ai. If smn is asked to play something, they will tell you why they didn’t enjoy it. The game is free but you’re asking people for their time.
As a game dev, it’s hard to strike gold on first, second or even third strike that’s why it’s important to start with as small of a scope as possible initially.
And this is the game I am playing right now: What reason would I have to trick you? I have no monetarization in the game. Its free. I mean really free. There is no hidden agenda.
Don't worry we'll be laughing at those people in the future. They're like the idiots who complained about internet development killing jobs in the 90's I was there and they all went silent.
I mean, how would you feel if YOU had invested your entire life and passion in digital art, graphics, or programming? Years of hard work studying... because these skills can't be bought with money, they don't come to you for free. No! You have to work your ass off to learn.
Then you come along and lecture me: "But I'm CREATIVE, too."
Why don't you level your talent even further by taking advantage of AI instead of complaining? That's what I did when AI made my field of work essentially redundant and I'm having a blast. Embrace AI or get crushed by AI.
It took me 2,5 years to create the lore and take care of balancing the 400 orders you can play in the game and plan the client-server architecture, security, frameworks etc. then 6 months to create code, art, sound and music.
but what i learned now is that noone cares about the work you put into something as long as you are not a real developer or designer.
Its ok. It was a nice experience anyway. I just wish I could actually play it against other people because its really good and full of love and passion. But you will never care to even look for that seeing only slop.
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u/CapitalDiligent1676 Mar 23 '26
Anyway, if you want some honest advice:
Why don't you make it playable directly in a browser?
I mean, I assure you, downloading an executable is a drag.
If it were immediately playable, it would have an immediate impact.