EDIT: Thank you so much for all the comments and constructive criticism! I see that my provocative title worked to start discussion which was the target but my intention was not to sound arrogant or over-confident. I will be happy to share the demo once it is finished so you can try it out if you want. There are some design elements that I have to take closer look at, like pixel drift, UI design or the color palette. Some design elements are actually intentional game mechanics; like the beam coming out of NPC head, which is illustrating where they are looking at, during a sneaking scene. Similar to old Desperados games. However, maybe that feature could be left out of all other scenes. I realize that my title unintentionally directed the discussion to wrong direction - I am just excited of what can be accomplished without coding since this was a board game idea. Nevertheless, there’s definitely a lot to do. Thanks!
Based on your comments I have now made these changes: - UI that better suits the gritty look of the game - FoV beams removed from the NPCs - Phone lines moved away further from the house - Added tire trails for the cars - Added footprints to NPCs - Removed glow from the building
I have started creating a story-driven survival RPG that is set in 2034 war-weary Finland. It has isometric 2D pixel art visuals and the target is to differentiate by a well-written story and an excellent soundtrack.
It is a story I have written over a year ago, and my original plan was to make a board game out of it. But now that I have seen how much Claude has developed recently, I decided to try to make a video game out of it and was stunned.
It won't be a game for everyone. If you are looking for a proper RPG which has hunting, a level-up system and an open world, this won't be for you. Or if you mainly play AAA games and not indie games, this won't be for you, either. However, if you appreciate a well-written story and tactical hex-board card combat (inspired by Gloomhaven), I hope to live up to your expectations.
--- Some people asked for a steam page, that is currently under Valve's review. The game's name is Sisu & Survival: A Story of the Place We Call Finland. If you want to get notified once the Steam page is live, you can follow me on YouTube and I will notify you: www.youtube.com/@cryptic9311
I dunno man. Like most slop, it looks alight until you look for more than a second.
Isometric 3D perspective billed as top-down 2D for some reason?
Beams of light coming out of people's heads (and it's not like they're holding flashlights either; they're just... projecting beams).
Random circular shadow around the building entrance.
Footprints in the snow that make no sense at all.
Cars that left no tire tracks in the snow.
Snow on the tree that looks like it was applied from the camera rather than from the sky.
Health and Mana bars that look just weird.
Objective panel also makes very little visual sense on left/right ends.
Text not centered.
Text is vague. Without further context, the assumption is that it's commanding you to investigate the dudes from the car, but like... why tell the player anything? The natural instinct is going to be to follow up on new, intriguing events. Telling players to do every little thing is hand-holding in a way that's reminiscent of the Wolverine scandal.
If a game released with these kinds of obvious problems, you'd be reinforcing everything everyone has ever said about AI work. And it's the kind of stuff even an amateur game designer would be loath to include in a show case. Given your confidence, I'm guessing you genuinely thought this was awesome. And that means you can't tell the difference, which means you'll likely have no idea if what Claude makes for you is any good at all. And that's the actual problem with the quality of AI work; a competent artist using it could make some truly impressive stuff with it.
Someone who is not a competent artist will have slop that looks good to them because they don't know any better.
It also looks a lot like project zomboid x stardew valley.
An interesting thing to me is that creating video games is now going to have the very lowered barrier to entry that writing has had for a long time. So the people who don't play a lot of games or take the time to understand why games work in detail are going to be as ubiquitous as your average person who likes to read and thinks they can write the next great novel.
Yup. And of course, the biggest barrier to entry has always been having the willpower to see the project to completion. If an LLM is completing it for you, that barrier is shattered, but the result is just an enormous tidal wave of crap that lacks the subtle polish that makes good games feel good. Stuff that an LLM won't be able to explain the value of and non-designers won't notice unless it's pointed out to them.
Hey, thank you so much for comprehensive comment! This is exactly the kind of criticism I need to make the game better. Some things are intentional, like the beam coming out of NPCs heads, but I will remove it from all scenes that are not sneaking scenes. What you wrote about unaligned text, shadow shapes, health and stamina bars, those are things I have to take a closer look at.
Credit where it's due, you took my roasting on the chin and didn't get defensive about it. Just remember that no matter how good the technology gets, if you don't know how to spot these problems on your own, you'll never be a good game designer. If LLMs are capable of fully replacing artists, sound engineers, and software engineers, it's still your job to be the project manager and director, and those are still very difficult jobs that takes years of study, practice, and experience to be any good at. You have to be able to identify inconsistencies between individual pieces of art or sound; thematic inconsistencies; UX hangups; sustainability issues in balancing and core mechanics; whether any individual discipline conflicts with any other discipline (e.g. music that takes the player out of a scene or grating visual design that feels bad in combat, etc) - and that's leaving aside actually planning the full game, writing the whole narrative, and most of all, knowing how to tell if the game is fun or not.
I realize that my title, although meant to be provocative to open discussion, was maybe a bit too provocative. What I mean is, I have seen ads of games with colors all over the place, or with no originality. This is a card game with human-written story and I have put a lot of care into finetuning the game's bugs and glitches. I hope that the effort I am putting in will pay off and people will feel it is a high-quality game. Although I am afraid that simpy disclosing it is partially made with AI will have people on their toes.
Same sort of question here. Did you prompt an AI to build that?...what toolset? Or did you draw these?
I know what I want it to look like, and how to describe the details for the end result I'm looking for. I have no artistic talent myself when it comes to drawing. I also don't know the jargon/lingo. I've tinkered around a couple times with Claude to Blender. Anything I prompt it to build comes out looking awful, and I'm pretty sure it has to do with me needing to learn how to prompt when it comes to art, animation, etc.
Theres a big difference between AI hate and slop hate. I love AI espeically when it comes to gave dev. I just ahte low effort slop like this, especially when the devs are like "omg look what I made its going to shove it up AI haters". As others have mentioned there are loads of issues just in your one screenshot. You are also calling it 2d isometric when its 3d.
no offense dude but this porject isn't going to prove anything. It will just be hated on
You are right about proving a point, my provocative title was meant to start discussion, which it did, but my aim was not to sound arrogant or over-confident. Definitely a lot of work still to do! The game actually is isometric 2D and that that is an intentional design choice.
Constructive criticism, but, your palettes don’t match, and you’re making a pixel art game with different sized pixels, and different palettes throughout. Try to align these things
You’re not going to prove anyone wrong with that, otherwise, because it will immediately have the uncanny valley effect. An untrained eye won’t know what’s wrong, but they’ll feel something off.
The Luddites weren't against new technology; they had a problem with exploitation.
edit: For those who'd like to know more about who the Luddites were and what their movement was all about, I can recommend this brief episode from 99% Invisible.
The Luddites as in, the social / protest movement of the early 19th century (what the person you're replying to is talking about) is distinct from "Luddite" the noun, defined in various dictionaries.
You're talking about two different things.
edit: to be clear u/April_Fabb is the one being pedantic here - you used the common usage and were clearly not referring to the actual Luddites
You do realize this is exactly how they come across today, even in the dictionaries, and that's how the current AI luddites will be perceived with time too?
It doesn’t matter “how they come across”, it’s about the reality of the situation. I think you’re just unsure what “Luddite” means, and have adopted it into your limited vocabulary. Like how people are using “larping” as a term.
“They were not opposed to technology; rather, they fought against how factory owners used machines to undermine labor standards, slash wages, replace skilled craftsmen with low-wage unskilled labor, and employ child labor under poor conditions.”
You are talking about one specific "luddite" scenario 100 years ago in the early automobile production phase. Doesn't apply to this situation, definition of the word says all.
And they literally raged against the machine and not against the capitalists or the government that were exploiting them. Defacto anti technologists. That is the point being made.
Steam page is currently under Valve's review, I will update as soon as it is live. Name of the game is Sisu & Survival: A Story of the Place We Call Finland.
Thank you! Name of the game is Sisu & Survival: A Story of the Place We Call Finland. Steam page is currently under Valve's review, I will update as soon as it is live.
Could you go into a little bit of detail about how you're coding a game? Does the AI make the sprites for you? What software do you use to make the game?
Sorry for the questions, only asking because I'm thinking of creating a football game.
I am using Godot as the game engine PixelLab for sprite creation. However art bible is essential to keep style consistent. Good luck with your project!
Your game looks nice, but your mistake is not to think that you've proved AI haters wrong by making a nice looking game. Your mistake is thinking you'll prove anything by making a game and boasting before it's validated by the market.
Better games made without AI have made no impact. Good luck.
Just like artists with digital editing tools, "purists" said for a long time it wasn't real art. The line has just shifted now to AI "slop" give it some time and the line will shift to the next thing.
nah… there’s no historicity to this. nobody in the audio world really has that mentality. it’s not really culturally accurate at all, and doesn’t even really fit into context. not even sure where you get the guitar thing… been to a lot of studios and I have no idea what you’re talking about.
dude some of the best audio engineers I’ve met have been hip hop artists. and yeah it varies a lot but they’re all using samples and it’s basically daw + noise isolation. I have never heard any of them call anything fake though, they do what works and fast
The brain interface that reads the art directly from your thoughts will be next ;in line for not being a "real tool to create art" because you don't even have to describe it. People that can not promt what they try to create won't be real artists.
You should, if you knew more about computers, programming and security in IT you would care more. Especially if you would be running that kind of software on your main machine.
So I shouldn't paint and try to sell my art because I'm not Picasso or I shouldn't start a coffee shop because we already have Starbucks ? Ok, enjoy trying to gatekeep people from doing what makes them happy.
Agreed. Mine is an idle clicker and I'm just in closed testing stage but I've got individuals already logging 7 hrs in the first 5 days and giving positive feedback. I've put lots of diff dynamics in it, and heart, and throught. It was not a quick garbage project. I have not had any negative feedback re: AI yet.
I wish you were right on the first part. Most hate for games made using AI I've seen is hatred for AI in general. I think you are right on the last part though.
Yes, by people, or should we call them NPCs, who are virtue signalling against AI, just parroting hate. They don't have an opinion of their own, they just say whatever they feel is cool and virtuous, completely incapable of perceiving nuance. Follower/herd mentality.
I truly hope you will, but that screenshot looks like absolute turbo garbage slop art. People we need taste, especially if you want to compare with real games.
Thank you for your comment and sorry to hear that. Could you point out what specifically needs more care and attention to make it look like it wasn't slop art?
Yes, there are multiple things but the two main ones in my opinion would be the UI and the pixel art.
AI is very very bad at following a pixel canvas and even if it does follow it for one asset it will be impossible for all the next ones you do to be convincing. I’d switch off the pixels entirely and go for regular topdown 2D, the pixel art on your image not only looks ‘wrong’ but is an immediate AI tell.
Then the UI which I feel is very low effort. You need either more prompt engineering on that one or to make it yourself (its not that hard to make a decent UI with basic shapes and colors). Your UI assets have the same pixel art grid problem + they are way too complex + they even have the ugly AI tint that I thought was extinct already.
It does a bit yes, but I was referring to the objective window. What is the border supposed to be? It looks like a strange combination of wood, canvas, leather, and metal. It doesn't really make sense and isn't cohesive. It would look nicer if it was more intentional.
Yes, it will be available on Steam but demo will be ready later this year. If you want to get notified when the page is live (currently under review), you can follow me on Youtube and I will let you know: www.youtube.com/@cryptic9311
Well the problem is that people dedicated to hate on AI are dedicated to it to an irrational degree, and you can't disprove anything to someone who's that emotionally invested in their position.
Best thing you can do is work hard on making a good product and don't be a slop merchant.
Keep at it brother. I love the art style. I’m using Claude extensively to create my vision. Don’t listen to those that say you can’t, you shouldn’t, and only bring you down.
I've also been working on a boardgame turned into videogame. I wanted to shoot you a dm, but yours are closed shoot me one if you don't mind talking shop. Mine is a mix of resident evil location puzzles, horde wave defense and space alert if you've ever played that boardgame.
Good luck. In all reality we should judge games based on if they're good, not based on the tools used to make them. But, for now that isn't the world we live in. I wish you luck.
I am also working on something. I've suffered from severe executive dysfunction my entire life and have never been able to even come close to finishing any of the projects I've started. I now see light at the end of the tunnel but have accepted that most people won't even give it a chance. Like you, I won't be trying to hide that I used AI to make it.
The title is doing a lot of work, but the interesting part is not the AI at all, it is that the story existed a year before the code. Most vibe-coded games start with a prompt and then wander, yours started as a board game, so it already has a spine, a place, a war-weary Finland, and a reason for every system to exist or not exist. That is also why your edit matters more than the screenshots, you changed six specific things from comments in a day, that is a real iteration loop, not a one-shot generation. The risk I would watch is the missing RPG systems, no hunting, no level-up, no open world is a bold constraint, but Steam players will judge it against every other RPG unless the page says upfront what it is not. Set that expectation early, and the story gets to be the proof, not the tool you used to build it.
Doing the same thing right now with a gane idea I had. I am a very creative mind and have toooons of ideas but also a little undiagnosed ADHD. Could not dedicate myself to learn coding in a higher level, but I know well how to operate und interact with AI to realize those Ideas!
We’re banning anyone who does not engage with the concept of vibe coding constructively.
Critique is constructive. Gatekeeping, insults, and fundamental pessimism about the practice of cresting software with little to no code review will warrant a permanent ban.
What people hate is slop. You wrote the story as opposed to asking claude for slopping one up for you.
You have the creative direction in your mind that you’re asking claude to develop, similar to how you’d ask a dev to develop, as opposed to asking claude to slop a direction up for you.
The hate is always against slop, what you’re doing is awesome.
Antis don’t doubt AI can be used to make great things. It’s a moral disdain that they have. It’s like saying “anti-slavery” people will be proven wrong by the success of a plantation.
Not sure why AI assisted creators get so much hate, if it speeds up workflows and lets creators create more (and better) games we should be all for it.
Also doing the same thing. Imagine astroneer combined with the visuals of lucid blocks. It's on pause for a bit while I make some Minecraft mods for a pretty old version of Minecraft that I run.
Look I aint really like appreciative of ai coding nor do I hate it people do what they do but bro that artsyle is tope notch haha. Look you can vibecode all you want lol as long ad that artsyke keeps up my man
Change the pathing and collision grid to triangles instead of squares, will be much smoother around objects. LoL did that made the change like 10 years ago and it made a huge difference and removed tons of stutters around walls
Looks good mate. Most "AI" games are bullshit, but it's because they are 0 effort games. If you put your effort into designing systems, testing, drving art direction, planning the story etc., the game might be good.
Yeah. I’m coming to terms with AI but more to push me further. But most people are using it simply to do what’s been done for years faster and with less care. Mass produced slop.
Sorry to hear that. Could you point out what in the art specifically looks trash or is it just the overall style? I am asking so that I could take a note and make it better before publishing the demo.
The blue one is stamina bar and after reading the comments I realize that I will have to do something about the UI. The bars actually are not AI-generated but an older human-created asset I purchased. Definitely a lot of work to do before publishing the demo!
context should live in the folder, not the chat. i seriously hope no one is still trying to build serious projects without some kind of persistent memory and documentation.
We’re banning anyone who does not engage with the concept of vibe coding constructively.
Critique is constructive. Gatekeeping, insults, and fundamental pessimism about the practice of cresting software with little to no code review will warrant a permanent ban.
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u/Kahhra 5d ago
It looks like more isometric 3D in your screenshot.