Before this
#vibejam, I was just casually creating game prototypes for fun, but this time, the Vibejam deadline became a good forcing function that pushed me to actually finish one.
While this game is more of a demo than a complete product, it gave me a taste of how challenging it is to fully complete a game. It requires brutal task prioritization, effective time management, and tons of quality assurance (QA). As many say, the last 10% is the hardest, and I’d argue it’s doubly so for games.
I now have even more respect for game developers at all levels who manage to ship their games.
And there you have it, my game, Gnome Mercy: Insect Invasion.
It’s a Vampire Survivors-style game where you play as a gnome on a rampage, annihilating alien insects invading his garden.
At the start of each run, the lord of the garden bestows a blessing if you can answer his riddle, powered by an LLM (with fallback riddles in case it fails).
The objective is to fight through waves of enemies and survive as long as possible.
A huge shoutout to Retro Diffusion by
@RealAstropulse for all the AI-generated sprites, artworks, icons, and more.
The music was created by Not Jam, the retro chiptunes are amazing.
This game is a special homage to
@poncle_soft, creator of Vampire Survivors, for inventing the best game genre in recent years!
And no, I don’t code at all. The code is 100% generated by
@windsurf_ai and built on PhaserJS.
Game link below👇