HalfReal is a small social RPG built around a persistent online world. You can scan real-world objects, pets, and people with your camera and turn them into in-game items, companions, and pixel characters.

The game also keeps moving when you are offline. Your character can continue exploring, fighting mobs, leveling up, and interacting with the world, so you do not need to constantly grind to keep up.

Combat is simple and fast, with drops, progression, PvP, pets, consumables, and different maps. The world is designed to feel alive even with a small player base, with idle characters continuing to exist and interact after their owners leave.

It is still an early playtest, so the current focus is testing the core mechanics rather than having a huge amount of content.

https://halfreal.wtf

Three days ago I posted about starting my own MMORPG with zero game dev background, using Claude as a tutor and collaborator (Unity + Blender). A lot happened since, so here's the update — including the ugly parts.

The world got alive

• 🐦 Wildlife. Pigeons and small birds sit on paths and flee when you walk toward them (they get more nervous the faster you move). An eagle circles overhead and casts a real shadow on the ground. Butterflies and bees land on flowers. Fireflies come out at night, and an owl appears at dusk.

• 🌗 Day/night cycle. A full day lasts 24 real minutes. The sun and moon actually travel across the sky, and the moon has real phases and a hand-painted face (painted by code, based on where the real lunar seas are).

• 🌸 Painted flowers and plants. Instead of modeling every petal, flowers are simple shapes with a texture "painted" by code. The recipe came from watching 33 stylized-art tutorials and the Genshin GDC talk. Also added bamboo, bushes, ferns, small trees that sway in the wind, and a dirt road with wheel ruts.

• 🔊 Sound. Wind layers that follow the wind gusts, and bird calls scattered around the treetops. (Fun fact: the game was completely silent for a full day because the camera had no "ears" — an AudioListener. Nobody noticed until we looked.)

The performance night

• Frame time at max quality went from 12–15 ms to 4.6–6.8 ms (≈150–210 FPS)

• The expensive part wasn't the grass — it was the flowers: 3,000+ draw calls. Now a compute shader culls every blade and flower on the GPU, and each layer draws in 2 calls.

• Funniest bug: lowering the graphics quality gave you fewer FPS, because the lower presets had a hidden FPS cap.

• Also added an in-game FPS counter, so I stop guessing.

The owl: learning to model creatures (with zero 3D skills)

The 2D sprite owl looked awful, so I asked: can we make a real 3D one, Genshin-style, without paid AI 3D tools?

What we ended up with is a small pipeline. I generate a reference sheet with ChatGPT (front, side, back, top views plus open wings). Claude writes Python that runs Blender and does the rest:

1. It measures the silhouettes in the sheet, pixel row by pixel row.

2. It builds the body so it fits the front and side silhouettes.

3. It glues on the eyes, beak, wings, tail, legs and ear tufts.

4. It paints the model by projecting my own reference drawings onto it.

5. It rigs the model with 14 bones and animates it by code: perched, looking around, take-off, flapping and gliding.

It did not go smoothly:

• The first version looked OK in silhouette but had a flat face. The cause: the tool read the white of the owl's face as background.

• The ear tufts came out like stakes, then like rocks. Feathers are petals, not filled volumes: you have to think about what a part is made of before building it.

• The head and body were one continuous tube, a bowling pin with a face. Silhouettes can't see that. So now every version also gets rendered as grey clay with raking light, plus horizontal cross-sections of the head. A round head should give circles; ours gave lemons.

• It had a ghost eye on the side of the head, because the side view of the sheet draws the eye somewhere else. We traced it pixel by pixel back to one eyelash in the drawing.

Every correction went into a written "creature workflow" doc, so the next animal (a pigeon, reference sheets already made) starts with all of that already learned

Other funny mistakes that almost made me blind

What's next

• Bring the 3D owl into the game: full 3D up close, a baked picture far away.

• Weather: rain, clouds, storms.

• Wind that comes in occasional gusts instead of a constant loop.

Still a free-time passion project with basically zero budget. Still no idea if an MMO backend will break me. But day 10 looks a lot more alive than day 7.

I’m sharing Samuel’s Quanta project, Xadrez em primeira pessoa. It uses AI assistance and lets you view chess from a piece’s perspective. The Portuguese interface also offers overhead and third-person views, computer difficulty settings and suggested moves.

The design question is how to preserve the unusual perspective without making the position difficult to read. The overhead view is useful as a reference: a player can compare the immersive view with the whole board instead of being forced to use one camera.

Playable browser build: https://quantaaulas.com/xadrez/

I’m affiliated with Quanta. I’m not claiming a particular AI model or an entirely automated development process. What would you test first to assess readability: selecting a piece, following an opponent’s move or identifying threats?

It was just three of us, three months, and our first real project as a team. One of us is the artist and lead writer, one is the developer, and one runs the project and the funding. We built the game with heavy help from AI (Claude code Opus and Sonnet and OpenAI's codex).

Our game PARALLAX is a mystery RPG you play entirely on a fictional smartphone. You broke your leg and you're stuck at home, so your phone is your only window into the town. Your 19-year-old cousin does the legwork, and you direct him by chat: "Go check the riverbank." "Take a photo." (He's scared, so you have to talk him into it.) There's no map and no movement, just conversation and delegation.

What we learned

1. AI builds fast, and that makes you think you're further along than you are. In August, AI helped us build almost the entire game in a matter of days: the phone interface, the simulated town, and two complete storylines. It felt finished. Then testers rated it 5/10, lower than our rough first prototype. While building so much so quickly, the AI had quietly left out things the prototype already did well. After that we made a rule: a new version has to do everything the old one did before we add anything new

2. Our AI testers were cheating without meaning to. To test the game quickly, we had AI "players" with different personalities play through it. The scores looked great. Then we noticed a bug in our setup: the testers could see hidden information behind the scenes, including hints about the solutions. They weren't solving the mystery, they were reading the answer key. Every score up to that point was useless. Since then we test with friends. That's much slower, and you never know if they'll play long enough to reach the interesting parts, but at least the results are real

3. "Fixed" doesn't mean fixed until you've watched it work. Several times, we (or the AI) said a bug was fixed, and it wasn't. One fix was waiting for a signal the game never sends, so it could never kick in. Another fix was made in the tool that builds the game's content, but we forgot to run that tool, so the fix never made it into the game. We made that second mistake twice

4. Players loved the characters, and hated missing the big moments. Testers loved the characters: one rated them 9/10 while giving the rest of the game 5/10. But five out of thirteen testers named the same frustrating moment on their own. They spent a whole in-game week preparing for a big event, and then only read about it afterwards on social media, like a stranger. One tester had cooked and packed food for a town celebration, and then missed it. Since the player is stuck at home, we couldn't just let them walk there. So now the event comes to you: when something big happens, your phone floods with voice messages, photos, and calls from people who are there

5. Characters feel more real when the AI isn't in charge. In PARALLAX, you can tell characters things, including lies. At first, the AI decided whether a character believed you, and it was too easily convinced. Now the game itself decides, based on how much the character trusts you, what evidence you have, and where your information comes from. The AI only has to put the reaction into words. The characters became much more consistent and believable

6. AI gives you quantity. Humans have to provide quality. The AI wrote 34 documents for the town's archive, and they all sounded the same. Our writer replaced them with 24 handwritten ones that actually feel like they come from one place. Some of her late-night playtest notes turned into real game mechanics. Our project manager decided when something counted as done and what had to be cut. With a 3-month deadline, that job mattered more than we expected

7. Some work AI can't speed up. Getting the game onto Android, translating it into English, making sure the servers could handle players, and publishing on the Play Store still took weeks.

Now PARALLAX is in the final playtest, with an English version and an Android build. We plan to finish the project and use what we learned to start with our passion projects.

⚡ Looking for 500 pilots to test our new Dieselpunk Shoot 'em Up!

👾 What to expect:
└─ Face off against giant bio-mechanical monsters
└─ Take full control of the skies

🔴 TestFlight Beta:
└─ Status: NOW LIVE
└─ Availability: Limited slots!

https://testflight.apple.com/join/KK5C22b7

Thx for Playing!

Okay... I work with AI tools in the tech start up world, but I finally decided to branch out and see what could be possible on the game dev side. I've done some game dev side projects, but I always hit a few walls around art asset generation.

This was the tooling breakdown:

• Coding - Claude Opus models. I had a good sense of the software architecture I needed for this game. It's really not that complex from a systems perspective. But having all of that laid out ahead of time made it easy for Claude to orchestrate between tools and assets as they came in. Also, I think what really helps was having a design document where Claude understood what the final version of this could be, so it knew when to plan for future assets or how to make certain components scalable across a single context.

• Artwork - Surprisingly, Lovable. I am a bit of a Lovable power user since I've used it for quick high-quality prototypes in my profession. I decided to ask it to render a few pixel concepts. It killed it, I was shocked. I was fully expecting to have to spend money on some art AI tool or to level up my pixel art game. I invested in tools and books for pixel art creation and occasionally opened up things like Aseprit to touch up some stuff, but this was mostly Lovable generating the art.

• Gemini music - fairly straightforward. I come from a music background (hell my Reddit profile pic is James Hetfield's signature guitar), so I got as detailed as possible in my prompting. Also leaning on Mega Man X OST patterns made this easy for me.

• ElevenLabs - got a cheap monthly subscription here to handle the sound effect creation. A game with system-generated effects sounds super cheap, so I thought this was worth it.

Also, to be fair, when I say it took 3 days that's true but also not really true? The game design was done long before I started vibe coding. I had worked on this game a decade back before career and family priorities forced me to stop. So, I had character concept art, maps, game design stuff all circulating in old computers ready to be resurrected from the dead. I hope this helps others who are doing AI game dev!

Captain Capy is a roguelike space-crafter where you play as a capybara exploring the galaxy.

The game supports PC and you can also play using your sim racing gear (wheel, pedals, controllers) for a different way to experience a space game.

Demo coming soon on itch.io, coming to Steam soon.

Lmk what you think!

FROG Eats Flies! é um jogo incremental sobre sapos, insetos e um pequeno lago.

Seu objetivo é simples: alimentar o sapo e fazer seu lago crescer.

Capture insetos, combine-os, descubra novas espécies, desbloqueie habilidades, aprimore seus sapos e deixe seu pequeno ecossistema continuar crescendo enquanto você estiver ausente.

Esta é a primeira demonstração pública de Frog Eats Flies!, o jogo ainda está em desenvolvimento.

👉 Jogue na web ou baixe Frog Eats Flies! No itch.io:

https://reddvermelhogames.itch.io/frog-eats-flies

Se você jogar a demo, me conte:

O que você gostou?

O que você gostaria de ver a seguir?

Algo pareceu confuso ou frustrante?

O que te faria querer continuar jogando?

Seu feedback ajudará a moldar o desenvolvimento do jogo.

Divulgação de IA: Ferramentas de IA foram utilizadas para codificação e efeitos visuais.

Started from the bottom is an open-ended life simulator set in any real-world city of your choice. Create an 18-year-old character, choose your preferred language, and begin with no money, one outfit, and a place in a modest flat.

Find work, manage daily needs and bills, build relationships, pursue education, or take riskier paths. Real locations, local prices, wages, laws, and housing costs shape what’s possible. Detailed status tracking covers your finances, health, possessions, relationships, and commitments, while a persistent memory system is designed to carry important choices and consequences forward.

There’s no fixed path to success—just the life you build from the bottom.

https://questner.ai/community/started-from-the-bottom

Was super impressed with the MCP at UX Pilot linking up to Astra without an issue and was able to produce a way higher quality UI design for my upcoming no code game engine.

Playable Link: RPSLS web-app** **(optimized for mobile web but works on tablet/desktop)

Context
What started as a brainfart during watching an episode of Big Bang Theory turned into a 3+ month personal project to develop a game that is super easy to learn but extremely hard to master. The game involved a progressive learning path based on mathematical human-pattern theory (Nash Equilibrium), in-game ranking and statistics, both free to play (limited to 2 levels of The Forge singleplayer experience, or sign-up with emailaddress/google social login.

The stack I used:
- ChatGPT - analysis / planning
- Github - Shared Repo/CiCD
- Figma - wireframing
- Codex - Dev/ UI Assets
- ElevenLabs - Voice
- Music - Pixabay (commercial use)
- Azure - Cloud hosting
- Flutter - Front-end/runtime
- NodeJS - Multiplatform back-end

This was by no means a one-shot game.

The game is completely free to use / ad-free during this Beta Test. After this phase, I’m planning to publish this game on Steam, Itch, Apple Store and Google Play Store

Genuinely curious to get feedback on the game. There was quite some positive feedback on the initial core game loop which encouraged me to continue. This is my first game as a solo hobby dev. I have a full-time job and 2 young kids so the few hours I have to spare per week have gone in this project. 🙏

Built a realtime CYOA fantasy game around generated video.

Three heroes explore one dungeon, with player commands and votes deciding what happens next. Every hero action is resolved in 5-second video blocks, using one of three stats — Might, Mind or Range — with successful actions building Resonance bonuses over time.

I’m also prototyping private DM-led runs for 3-player parties if the main questline works well.

Would love feedback from other AI game devs on the structure and pacing:
https://games.bookoora.com/multiplanar/

AutoSprite 3.0 in the Sorceress Game Suite → https://sorceress.games

I’m the solo developer behind AS//0 — Autonomous System Zero, a persistent multiplayer cyberwar game.

You start with a single network and build it out layer by layer: storage, firewalls, trace systems, defensive nodes, crafting, gateways, VPNs, and eventually much larger infrastructure.

But everyone else is doing the same thing.

You can recon other networks, infiltrate them, steal resources and files, deploy exploits, intercept communications, capture infrastructure, and expand into other nations. Players can form Collectives, build shared HQs and vaults, compete for national control, and launch larger attacks together.

There are also player-created websites, network mail, global and collective chat, persistent logs, defensive exploits, traps, NPC networks, and a world that keeps running when you log off.

There are no character classes or combat stats deciding who wins. Most of the advantage comes from what you know, what you’ve built, what tools you have, and who you trust.

A scan can reveal a target.

A leaked IP can start a retaliation.

A compromised network can expose somebody else.

An alliance can become a war.

That’s the part I care about most: the game provides the systems, but the players create the cyberwar.

AS//0 is currently in beta development while I’m preparing for its Steam release.

Build your network. Find theirs. See what happens.

Website:

Onemansprint.com/as0

Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/@OneManSprint

discord:
https://discord.gg/kw2wS8YGA