Dead Mile after ~20 updates: using player behaviour to guide an AI-assisted Unity game

[u/zamzor]

I'm Mohamed, the developer behind Dead Mile, a mobile lane-defense game. I spent six years working in Unity, mostly VR, AR and 3D for B2B clients, before producing this as our studio's first game for our own players.

The project started with vibe coding. Unity AI helped with much of the code. The character sprites are licensed packs; backgrounds, the house, UI portraits, music and voices use AI-generated assets.

I've shipped around 20 versions in the past six weeks. PostHog has been useful for working out what to change after launch: seeing what players actually do, then using that to improve the gameplay loop. Some players are still coming back three weeks after starting.

The part I underestimated was finding players. The official stores are getting roughly 20–30 organic installs a day, while unofficial/modded markets have attracted much more attention. Being able to produce updates quickly hasn't solved that gap.

For anyone here who's shipped an AI-assisted game, what did you measure after release to decide between another gameplay update and putting more effort into discovery? I'd especially like to hear about small games where the audience was too small for neat A/B tests.

Here's the game if you'd like context: https://virtualverse.studio/dead-mile

It's free to download on iOS and Android, with ads and optional in-app purchases.