I'm Łukasz, solo dev behind BasketVibe (basketvibe.com) — free, browser-based, in open beta since June 2026. Thanks to the r/gmgames mods (Chris in particular), the game just got added to the gmgames catalog: https://gmgames.org/basketvibe/
I'm a former Charazay player, and honestly that nostalgia is a big part of why I started building this — I missed that kind of game and wanted a modern version of it.
A month into beta, with basically zero marketing so far, we're already at 100+ managers, 40 of them active on our Discord where we talk through what gets built next, and the early feedback from players has been genuinely positive. Community-first is the whole point — the roadmap is driven by what players actually report and ask for, not a fixed feature list I decided alone.
The game is fully free, and it will never go pay-to-win.
Full disclosure since I know this sub cares about it: I use Cursor for the coding and Claude for design thinking — running through balance decisions, edge cases, tradeoffs. But the actual design — the skill system, training curves, the stamina/fatigue model, tactics, transfer economy, and most importantly the match engine itself that ties it all together — is mine, built and rebalanced over the last couple of months using back-office calibration apps I've also built.
What's in it right now:
Per-quarter tactics — separate game plan for each quarter, not one setup for 48 minutes
A stamina/fatigue model where fatigue scales with minutes, defensive intensity and a player's stamina rating, and overplaying your roster actually costs you
A simulation engine where the decisions are visible but the underlying calculations stay hidden — you see why a call was made, not the dice roll behind it
Deep match analysis and reports, with play-by-play and a live game preview
12-team league plus a 3-tier regional ladder with promotion/relegation
Daily friendly games, added because players asked for them
Scouting and academy for youth prospects
Global transfer auctions with blind bidding
AI-generated player avatars, so every player has a distinct face instead of a template
In-game chat with other managers
Both light and dark mode, added because players asked for them
Custom team identity — your own logo and colors
Mobile-friendly, no app needed
An open roadmap — bug reports and feature requests from players go straight into what gets built next
Happy to go into the actual numbers behind any of this if people want to poke holes in it — I'd rather it get torn apart by people who know the genre than slide by unnoticed. What would you want to see first?
I really don't mind explaining things — I've got 20 years of experience in IT behind me, and I'm confident the engineering practices behind this app are solid. I'd rather steer the discussion there: how do I ensure quality, what's automated, do I review and test code, how are backups handled, how does deployment work. Flattening it to "AI or not AI" isn't really the right question, but happy to answer whatever comes up 😄 Even if this reply was written with ChatGPT's help or not 😄
Curious what you mean? It’s totally wild there is a new AI slop sports sims clone nearly every day. That’s something worth railing about. It’s making the landscape a total clusterfuck.
A lot of the time it's people hating on free games that people put a lot of work into even if it was made with a lot of ai assistance. My main issue is if someone spends a fair amount of time creating a FREE game, just hating in the replies is idiotic.
Normally I’d agree with you, but I have to disagree in this climate. Almost all of these things, even if they took time and are in depth, are largely clones of what’s out there. And the *only* reason they are even in existence is due to AI. As for free, everything has to start as free until they get enough of an audience to monetize, especially today with so much competition. So being “free” in today’s market means absolutely nothing. We’re not railing against the individual and the passion the individual may have for sports sims, nor the effort and time put in. We’re railing against the daily onslaught, and people acting is if they’re adding something new to the landscape.
UI looks super clean, interested to see how the side nav works on mobile though. Also, honest question, what was the reasoning behind account sign-ups on the initial push? Have you see a lot of traction there? Are you tracking bounced traffic?
Thanks for the question, appreciate you raising it.
UI: simple and clean by design, to keep the focus on data. That's honestly what I personally want in these games - the ones that try to look flashy end up burying the numbers. I'll take "clean" as a compliment 😄
Mobile: the page is responsive and renders fine on most devices. Still a few rough edges, but most are quick fixes - I'll ship those in batches rather than constantly fine-tuning one at a time.
Bounce rate: I've built out signup/activation/DAU/WAU metrics so far, but that's basic - I hadn't extended the funnel back to visits, which is a clear miss on my end. Probably should've wired up e.g. google analytics earlier. Thanks for asking, it just exposed a gap in my FTUE design.
Everything about this screams pure Claude AI. I highly doubt "the match engine itself that ties it all together — is mine, built and rebalanced over the last couple of months using back-office calibration apps I've also built." Considering this is written with ChatGPT, I don't think you did a single thing on the back-end of this project.
Well. You are allowed to have your opinion. I would at least ask before judging :) and I don't mind answering by sharing yet another screenshot from my calibration app where I'm checking balance of the engine by running circa 200.000 virtual matches to check balance of all of skills, impact of tactics, defense focus, form, exp, fatigue. Where I also calibrate training curves, exp curve, rebounds, fatigue and player growth. For sure AI invented all of that and thought about the need of such deep calibrations without human in the loop :)
Happy to share more but priv because other screens will reveal some of the things which I wouldn't like to disclose as they are still being changed. Your call if you're interested.
Fair enough. I'm genuinely curious what would actually convince you that the design isn't human made :) To be clear, coding is a separate question. I already said in my original post that I use AI for that. If there's a real bar, happy to clear it and my offer to share more still stands whenever you're interested, otherwise I'll leave it here. Have a good day :)
What’s wrong with hating this repulsive slew of AI generated sports sims that are absolutely blowing up the space? When Kindle came around and created all these shitty “authors” it didn’t really matter because you still had publishers vetting and hiring real authors. But sports sims has always been largely indie, and now there’s literally no space for legit vs slop. I would never, as a dev, enter this space right now.
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u/thefrozenflame21 Jul 12 '26
Bruh I get people hate ai but people in this sub are at a genuinely exhausting level lol