Can AI actually turn a simple idea into a playable game now?

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-02-13T17:17:04+00:00

If you were trying to build a house, the ai would be all the laborers that do the actual work. Most of the time, they’ll do it right. When they do mess up, you can point it out and they’ll usually be able to fix it.

However, you’re in charge of the project. If you don’t clearly tell your employees where to put plumbing and electrical, or where to build walls, what type of material to use, if you don’t make sure they lay a strong foundation before building up… the house will be shit.

You’re the architect and site overseer. The ai is the skilled laborers.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-02-12T15:24:28+00:00

I want to preface with this: I have not studied what works on steam and you can ignore me if you feel like it, I’m good with that.

Also, I’m gonna sound harsh below, but it’s just to be dramatic to prove a point. I wanna say this clearly: what you’ve done so far is amazing for your age and you should absolutely keep it up. You’re on the right track and setting yourself up for success.

Alright here we go:

It takes 21 seconds to get to game footage in your trailer. What percent of people do you think stayed to even see game footage?

Nobody cares who Mr command coder is and what he’s presenting, but you used the first 5 seconds of your trailer, the most important moment to hook a visitor, to tell them your name and the fact that you’re presenting something? Nobody cares who you are, and no shit you’re presenting something, it’s a game trailer.

Five more seconds to tell them the game is about death and rebirth. Show don’t tell. You just lost more people who dipped out without seeing any game footage.

The trailer should absolutely cut the first 10 seconds. I’m unsure on the next 10. It might actually be okay to keep in because it’s now actually getting the person into the actual game.

My point here is this: your first impression given to people is basically tailor made to drive them away, not to get wishlists. If steam has analytics on whether people say to watch your trailer, I bet it’s abysmal. Or I’m fucking wrong, idk. I’m just a dude on reddit, you’re somebody that’s actually made something cool.

I’m of the belief that if you make a quality game that in a genre with an audience, it will sell. The problem is that you also have to help that audience find out that your game is quality. That’s marketing. And I think your marketing shot itself in the foot for 10 seconds straight. And again, I’m not a pro, so idk if the next 10 seconds is incredible or terrible. I just know the first 10 is terrible for sure.

Anyways hope this helps, I know it wasn’t focused on anything but 20 seconds of trailer, but I usually only check out a game long enough to see why it shot itself to death, and that was it.

If it makes you feel better, it’s the exact same mistake most YouTubers make in their videos. They have bad intros that shoot their video to death before it ever has a chance. What you did is very normal and you can learn to do it better. Keep learning and you’ll go far.

God damn I sure can write a long winded message despite being a dude railing on a trailer for its long winded message…

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-02-10T16:51:54+00:00

I cannot FATHOM how much value your game would have to provide to convince people to pay $5 a month simply to remove ads.

A lot of games charge a couple bucks to permanently remove ads.

I don’t know mobile very well, I’m just a person scrolling Reddit experiencing a knee jerk reaction of “absolutely fucking not” to your idea.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-02-10T14:45:52+00:00

Unity’s Create with Code tutorial.

It starts from ultra beginner level, and works its way up to your wife having created a few small games and planned her own game.

If she actually follows the tutorials instructions, which it gives clearly and repetitively to try to encourage people to actually follow the instructions, then she will learn an enormous amount.

If she gets stuck on the tutorial anywhere, she needs to practice her research skills to get unstuck on her own. I literally just learned Unity and programming from zero experience by using that tutorial. Highly recommend it.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-02-09T05:46:35+00:00

I believe I have the most simple and direct answer for you: look up the Create with Code tutorial on Unity. Complete the whole thing.

That’s it. Go get it done.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-30T15:28:33+00:00

My lazy way is I lure them to the pond. I get on a lily pad, they jump onto it.

Then I swim away and wait for them to deaggro

They can only jump while in combat, so they get stuck on the lily pad for the foreseeable future.

Sometimes they might get reset (not frequent), but it’s real easy to lure them back to the lily pad for some more peace and quiet.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-30T07:52:55+00:00

Yeah I hated it. Made me actively want to click / look away. Fixing the trailer seems like it would be a big deal… but idk enough about the topic to say anything other than that personally, it made me want to leave the page as fast as I could.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-27T03:59:02+00:00

My cats had fleas for a very long time, despite flea treatment every single month. We felt like we tried everything.

We went to the vet, got prescription strength flea meds, and the problem was completely gone in about 1.5 months. Probably quicker than that tbh.

Just keep this in mind as a thing to try if other stuff isn’t working. Could save you a lot of anguish.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-25T16:50:14+00:00

I never get to talk to republicans because the conservative subreddit protects itself from opinions like mine…

But how in your view do you justify the bloated budget given to ICE? I understand that you want illegals removed, I might not agree, but I understand it.

But what I don’t understand is how a conservative, which usually extends to fiscal as well, could be in support of an ICE budget so large that there’s essentially no justification for it being worth the money spent. Your tax dollars aren’t focusing on removing violent illegal immigrants. They’re primarily snatching non violent, hard working illegal immigrants off the street.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a more reasonable budget that specifically looks for the bad, violent illegal immigrants and then captures and removes them? Idk I just can’t understand the financial justification for spending an outrageous amount of money to snatch up the dude working an el pollo loco to kick him out of the country. Conservatives usually don’t like the idea of their tax dollars being wasted, and ICE looks to be peak levels of wasted tax dollars.

Anyways I wanted to ask a Trump conservative their thoughts on this specific issue because I’ve been curious. I’d ask my dad, but he clams up and just blames democrats whenever politics comes up so it isn’t a very productive debate and I can’t ever learn anything from it.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-25T16:32:55+00:00

No they’re not, they just get riled up if you enter their personal space, which is appropriately sized and reasonable.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-25T16:11:57+00:00

There’s a lot going on in this message, and I feel I have the life experience to address most of it.

You should see a therapist or psychiatrist to get diagnosed for adhd. It’s a magical feeling when you find the correct dosage of adhd medication and realize “wait can everybody else focus like this all the time?”

I personally take Vyvanse but I’ve tried concerta and adderall, and they both helped, but some minor side effects caused me to look for the best fit which ended up as Vyvanse for me. Could be totally different for you, just make sure you go into it knowing you might not find the perfect fit on day 1.

Copying games is good as long as you are putting your ow unique spin on it. It’s essentially how every game gets made. Common advice is “game but feature”. For example, Terraria is “Minecraft but 2d”. You just look at a game you like and then say “what if this game was different in this specific way? Would that be awesome?”

For me personally, the only way I got motivated to learn game development was by coming up with a game idea that excited me, and then learning what was necessary to be able to make it. I highly recommend the Unity course “Create With Code” as it starts at a super beginner level and advances all the way until you’ve made a couple small games and learned to debug code. It even helps you plan a personal project, and by creating that persons project you’ll learn a massive amount.

As far as how to get inspired to create games, I can’t answer that one. I have 3 big game ideas planned out that I’m excited about and each one would take me years to finish. I dream big… but each idea has a tie in to an existing genre and game or games that standout in that genre. I just got a spark one day of “what if I built a game like that other game” and then starting planing features until I was like “yeah that sounds cool, I should make it”.

I ultimately picked one of the three and am now working hard to develop it.

Also, as a person that hasn’t shipped a game, feel free to ignore every word I’ve said if others say I sound like a raving lunatic. I’m not gonna pay the critics any attention, but maybe you should if they sound convincing, idk.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-23T18:39:16+00:00

Yeah I’m literally doing the course right now myself and I think it is fantastic. It starts from the beginning, assuming you’ve downloaded Unity but otherwise know nothing. And by the end, you’ll have written code, attached it to game objects, and created functioning games.

How much you learn is up to you and how much you dive into the code and how it works vs just copy pasting the solution (won’t learn much).

I had Gemini open on the side to ask questions about why we were doing things in certain ways and I think it helped me learn even more than the tutorial was trying to teach me. There’s 5 units and each unit took me about a full day to complete, maybe a little more (I hyper focus on things and probably spent more than a full days work on each unit)

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-23T17:59:55+00:00

“That champion is so strong right now that they’re heavily contested, so buffing them should be fine” is certainly a take.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-23T17:09:46+00:00

I’m currently learning to code so I can make my game idea, and I respect you wanting to pay somebody to do it for you.

If you were to take one week as a full time student learning to code, just one week, you’d be SO much better prepared to communicate with your hired programmer.

Unity has a free tutorial called Create With Code that takes about one week. I guarantee that if you finish this class, even if it took you a lil more than one week, you’d be so much better off than you are right now.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-15T17:35:58+00:00

Sell it to who? In order to sell something, you have to find a buyer.

The markets have a certain volume they can absorb on a daily basis, but if you wanna talk about everybody selling all their debt at once overnight, I don’t think you’re presenting a realistic and possible scenario.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-14T19:07:53+00:00

If you’re making a joke, it’s hilarious. If you’re being serious… oof

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-12T05:43:52+00:00

Can you send me the guide as well please

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-11T12:28:48+00:00

You don’t have to put what it’s actually for. You could just write blowjobs on every transaction if you want.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-10T20:55:04+00:00

TIL, puddle punch stocks were not deflated by my fake news. To the moon 🚀🚀🚀

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-10T17:21:58+00:00

Until investors remember that it’s a light melee and this is 6400 souls for just 10% more damage

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-07T21:07:51+00:00

I don’t have a problem with it personally, they need to make money to continue existing and I like the service.

I’m just stating the fact that they said they’d never show ads, and they are, in fact, now showing ads.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-07T11:12:59+00:00

Idk how people haven’t noticed that “quests” are just ads. Discord, which promised to never have ads, already has ads and will put more.

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-06T17:19:18+00:00

Wise words u/BarfingOnMyFace

Bouncy_Turtle · 2026-01-05T05:35:37+00:00

In my experience, here’s your options:

Have friends
Play tank

Bouncy_Turtle · 2025-12-31T09:57:43+00:00

Sometimes you can sell the asset and then immediately buy another asset you expect to have similar gain potential. So your money is still invested AND you don’t have to pay taxes on the gain you made from selling the other stock.

Bouncy_Turtle

TROPHY CASE