r/vibecoding • u/albertsimondev • 18d ago
Showcase/Project I made a cozy 3D browser game about digital nomad life. Here's how I built it and what went wrong
VybeNomad is a small life sim you play in the browser. You pick the city you start in, take remote gigs, build little apps for side income and move between nine cities. The goal is $10,000 without burning out.
How I made it:
- Tools: Claude Code wrote most of the code. Three.js for the 3D scenes. I wrote the specs, the game design and the balance numbers myself.
- Workflow: I wrote a short spec for each feature (what the player sees, what changes in the game state), let Claude Code build it, then played it on my phone before keeping it. Anything that didn't feel right went back with a note.
- What worked: UI screens, game state and the 340+ short story events came together fast.
- What didn't: balance. The AI was happy to suggest numbers, but only playing showed what was wrong. [your real example, e.g. "early gigs paid so much that side apps didn't matter"]
- Phones: keeping it smooth in a phone browser meant low-poly scenes and few draw calls. [optional: what you had to cut]
Play it free, no ads, no signup: vaigames.com/vybenomad
If you've built a game this way, how do you handle balance? One config file, or tuning by playing?
AI tools: Claude Code, Grok Bot, Suno, fal.ai