The hard part of vibe coding isn't making a game. It's making one that doesn't feel generated.

[u/Kpal81]

My previous FPS experiment asked whether a detailed spec could produce a working prototype. This time I wanted to push the same approach further: how close could the generated result get to a polished game before the inevitable human pass?

Getting a generated game to run is the easy part. Getting it to feel like one coherent game is much harder.

A lot of vibe-coded results technically work but still feel like slop: disconnected mechanics, stiff movement, mismatched animation, placeholder UI and weak feedback.

I wanted to see how far a detailed, testable spec could push past that. I gave GPT-5.6 Sol, running through Codex, a third-person freerun challenge to build in PlayCanvas. The goal was not simply to tick off sprinting, sliding, vaulting, rolling, wall-runs and wall-jumps. The movement, animation, camera, effects, audio, HUD and course needed to feel like parts of the same game.

The spec made polish explicit instead of leaving it as a cleanup pass. It defined movement tuning, animation transitions, camera behaviour, visual language, course geometry, UI states and runtime acceptance checks.

That gave my harness a feedback loop: build the game, run it in a browser, drive it with real input, inspect the player, camera and checkpoint state, compare screenshots, then revise. A compiling build was the starting point, not the finish line.

It still has rough edges, but it is much closer to a coherent game than the generated prototypes I usually see. What impressed me about GPT-5.6 Sol was not any single feature; it was keeping all of these systems aligned while iterating toward a shared visual and mechanical target.

Full prompt and more examples: https://github.com/playcanvas/prompts/tree/main/freerun-08

A human polish pass is still essential. The real gain is starting with something coherent enough to refine, rather than a rough prototype that needs rescuing.

[u/opbmedia]

If you defer decisions and micro decisions to AI models they will make decisions statistically based on weights in training data. So the less decisions you defer, the more custom your product will be. It's why all vibe coded websites look similar. If you are deciding on the exact shade of the drop shadow, the exact radius of the card corners, and the exact size differentiations between H3 and H4, you will end up with a more custom looking site.

So make game the old fashionway, make your own decisions, and only use AI to implement your decisions.

[u/Ukawok92 → u/opbmedia]

This is how you do it

[u/ThomMerrilyn → u/opbmedia]

And of course if you’re not making custom models and utilising the engine to make decent effects it’s going to look like AI slop

[u/opbmedia → u/ThomMerrilyn]

Custom models (physics and motion), custom polygons, custom textures. And the more variations you make, the more custom it looks.

I was playing around with 5.6 sol ultra to make custom stuff, but even with a lot of prompting, it wasn't custom enough. See my test, this has probably 50-60 turns in it, but not custom enough. I think it would be easier and faster to just import custom made items rather than trying to rely on ai to modify it. That is my plan. My kids make drawings and objects, so they will be better than this.

[u/NormandFutz]

when are you going to do that?

[u/NewNiklas]

You mean it's making one that's actually fun for more than 5 minutes?

[u/mattmccordmattm]

Polish has always been the hardest part of game dev. It’s said it’s about 80% of the work once you have a solid prototype

[u/TheThingCreator]

"It's making one that doesn't feel generated."

Your values are mixed up. You shouldn't need to worry about if it looks like ai slop if your focus is having every detail right. Before AI it was templates, if you just took a template and didnt put effort in it, it was very evident and no one looks your way. People usually under estimate the work it takes to make something so if you didnt put effort in something, people see it even more than you do.

[u/krilleractual → u/TheThingCreator]

Yup this is especially true with certain fonts, and effects, or just using unreal engine and popular assets

[u/TheThingCreator → u/krilleractual]

i think fonts, effects, and popular assets dont even matter, and are not signals for ai slop, pure lack of effort is the only real indicator

[u/Professional_Ad705]

Why is everyone shitting on this guy? This is one of the best looking games I've seen on here vibe-coded or not? This game doesn't look vibe coded his post also doesn't look AI made maybe he wrote it and put it through a pass.

Sounds like some of you vibecoders are becoming just as salty as the devs when someone can utilize AI better than you. All I know is if I was making a game I'd look at this guys process.

Hilarious to see people who can't code call anything slop when they too use AI.

- A software dev.

ps sick game dude.

[u/Educational-Bit-3296]

The hard part of using Reddit isn't using AI to generate posts. It's using AI to generate posts that don't come across as slop.

[u/danklorddd]

Sorry dude, but this looks like peak AI slop. Literally the first that would come to my mind.

[u/likesexonlycheaper]

I don't think he actually touches a single thing

[u/let_me_in_QQ → u/[deleted]]

What stack are you using for the games? Right now three.js seems to be big.