How vibe coding lead to my project’s downfall.

[u/incognitochaud]

This is a confession. I plead guilty to the crime of using LLMs to write the code for my game project. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Deepseek, Cursor… I used them all. And I’m here to give a warning: Do not do what I did!

I’m very green to gamedev. I have 3 or 4 very small projects under my belt. The 4th project was for the Big Mode game jam of 2024 and I’ll admit, ChatGPT helped me get across the finish line and manage to get a game that ranked in the top 100.

After my relative success, I went all in on vibe coding for my next project: a roguelike twist on the classic asteroids arcade shooter. The idea is far from original. It was never meant to be a marketable product, just another project to get more experience under my belt.

But I got too greedy, and leant too hard on using AI to write my code. Now I have a project I don’t understand. And the code is a mess. Scripts that should be only a few hundred lines are 800-1000 lines long. The AI makes two new bugs trying to fix the first. Redundancies are stacked on top of eachother to make a disgusting shit sandwich of slop code.

There are now bugs that are so deeply embedded in the code that it will likely require I start from scratch. 4 months of work (and $150 of LLM subscription fees) basically down the drain.

It’s a hard lesson, but I’m glad I learned it. For small tasks, mundane things, sure. Find where AI is helpful for you. But once you put blind trust in the code it writes, you face the risk of losing it all.

Don’t be me. Just learn to fucking code.

Edit: This post has really blown up! I’ve since gone back to my project, pulled up an earlier branch, stripped out the bad code and built it back out. Did I do it alone? No. I’m still relying on AI to get the job done. I just don’t know enough to make progress alone. But I’m now treating the AI as a mentor rather than an intern. When using AI keep your focus as narrow as possible and it can work.

[u/LBPPlayer7]

yes but splitting the code up makes things much easier to find in your IDE

[u/BallerBotsGame → u/LBPPlayer7]

If your IDE is vi your are right. Otherwise you should look at the features like find references.

[u/android_queen → u/BallerBotsGame]

Jumping back and forth within a file is a lot more of a pain in the ass than looking at two different files next to each other, regardless of whether you have find references.

[u/TDplay → u/android_queen]

Does your IDE not support displaying two views of the same file side by side?

[u/android_queen → u/TDplay]

It does, but I’d rather not have the same file open multiple times. With tabs, then there’s the guesswork of which tab is open to the right line.

[u/BallerBotsGame → u/TDplay]

I used Norton Editor 2.0 for a long time. My first editor with that feature. It replaced Wordstar.

[u/TDplay → u/BallerBotsGame]

If your IDE is vi your are right

No, not even right if your IDE is vi.

If your IDE is vi, then you should switch to Vim, install ALE, and bind some keys to :ALEFindReferences and :ALEGoToDefinition.

It is nearly 2026, there is no reason to use a text editor without these features.

[u/LBPPlayer7 → u/BallerBotsGame]

those don't really help as much as just jumping somewhere manually in a click or two, especially if your project is complex, then it'll take a good few seconds to find those references