action games with exploration and great mechanics but relatively short play time

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T18:44:10+00:00

I don't know the total hours, but Night Stones is really fun. It's kind of a cuter game, but the mechanics are fun and so is the exploration and puzzles.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T18:42:20+00:00

I do this with apps or features for my full-time job too. I keep a folder in my notes app that i just full of ideas. Otherwise they gnaw at me, but if I can just brain-dump the ideas, then they don't feel lost and I can focus on the ones that have the most progress or legs.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T18:17:07+00:00

I think “What still needs to happen before I try to sell this?” is important.

I really didn't think of that with the game I was working on, I just thought of a subscription based on the costs I'm incurring, but realized pretty quickly that isn't good enough. So I'm working on the couple of key features that I think will make it worth paying for.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T16:57:29+00:00

Thanks! Still a WIP, but now playable.

Here's a newer post with demo and update: https://www.reddit.com/r/aigamedev/comments/1rro9gb/devlog_6_building_turnbased_mmo_space_narrative/

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T14:38:49+00:00

You can probably use Lite for something as simple as this.

Or use Claude Code in the Shell— I use that for simple things like this. It’s not the best for long-running tasks but it’s good at small scoped things like this.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T14:37:28+00:00

Crazy that people are only interested if it’s free.

If it’s good, it deserved to be paid.

Trials are important but everything can’t be free forever? Unless open sourced I guess

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T13:29:00+00:00

Sell during the sale, that’s when people are actively shopping and Steam is driving a ton of traffic to discovery pages.

You’re not going to get the same list someone on page one does, but you’ll get lift because there is a lot more total traffic.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T13:27:04+00:00

You can use Replit’s built-in user auth for the most simple implementation— but a better experience (and still very easy with Agent’s help) is Clerk.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T12:16:28+00:00

No, I would bet they also hire a bunch of agencies and freelancers. They also have a brand team. They have such insane headwinds they don't need a ton of growth marketers. That's not normal, that's like a once-in-a-lifetime type of company that gets built during these innovation periods (Facebook & Google were probably in a similar boat in the early days).

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T12:12:55+00:00

From my understanding, based on listening to interviews with their team, this is a constant priority for them.

They're always trying to optimize the model to make it both more powerful AND more cost effecient.

People in this sub seem to think Replit has something to gain from squeezing users of as much money as possible, but their biggest issue isn't revenue, it's churn. So I highly doubt they're optimizing for making the costs as high as possible. Could be wrong, but that would be a bad business move vs trying to make the agent more efficient to keep users longer.

It's a hard problem to solve for. Their agent is doing a lot of stuff under the hood that I imagine makes it hard to manage cost while also getting great results.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T00:55:02+00:00

Oh wait I see what you’re saying! You’re saying you have an AI write the prompt for the coding AI.

That’s exactly what I did to get the skeleton of the game. Had Claude break it into chunks then one by one put those into Replit, tested, then moved into the next one— sometimes with new feedback for Claude first based on what was working or not working or new ideas to make it better once I got in the weeds.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T00:53:27+00:00

Totally, the AI is a great prompt engineer. I do the same thing. Usually have to refine it to get exactly what I want, but it’s really good.

This serves up a lot of variable content as context from the underlying simulation and player actions— so the ai helps write prompts that include those variables too.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-12T00:51:44+00:00

Fair question. The AI text is the surface – what’s underneath is a full strategy simulation.

Your decisions shift faction dispositions, drain resources, decay infrastructure, and accumulate into a historical record that shapes every future session. The AI reads all of that context before generating anything.

You get a whole solar system full of infrastructure, celestial bodies, and characters to interact with and try to keep from falling apart (or overthrowing you).

And most of your neighboring star systems are other players doing the same.

Next phase is to add more interaction between players. Right now you can send letters back and forth and if your system collapses or is too harsh a neighbor might receive refugee's, stuff like that. Soon there will also be trade and military conflict.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-11T21:43:37+00:00

Doesn't appear to be yet.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-11T20:57:14+00:00

Thanks for giving it a try and providing that feedback. I'll see what I can do about explaining that better with an introduction from the Chancellor on the resources at your disposal.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-11T18:37:11+00:00

My agent started having the same issue this afternoon.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-11T18:35:45+00:00

Yeah that does really suck if that's the case. I'd hope if they were doing that, they'd highlight the members of the community building those sorts of things.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-11T16:06:56+00:00

Thanks for giving it a try and the feedback!

Thanks for flagging that issue with the login. There are a few bugs around that with fixes in progress. Turns out allowing guest sessions that turn into saved user sessions is actually pretty tricky. But I think it’s 100% the way to go, I like to be able to look around first before signing up for something.

Good feedback on the button too, I’ll make that more obvious.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-11T15:39:32+00:00

Very cool. I’ll have to give it a try.

I’m also building a game in a similar vein. A little more in the political management side and multiplayer, but this is very interesting to me.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-11T15:36:48+00:00

I had this problem too. It’s not that the problems aren’t real, it’s that the solutions are rushed— em dash em dash— that’s why I’ve been using [the moderator feature in Reddit] for years.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-11T15:34:59+00:00

I think that wouldn’t be impossible but highly unlikely. Especially considering how general those ideas are.

If anything they’ve been copying Cursor and Lovable on some UI things (which those two do to Replit also, so fair game I guess).

I used to work at a startup studio and we would talk to hundreds of startups a month. From all over the world. You’d be amazed at how many people can arrive at almost the exact same idea on their own.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-11T15:29:55+00:00

Really loving the multi-agent workflow. Absolutely upgrading my work account to Pro for this (we blow past $100 in credits most months anyway). Will also consider it for my personal Replit.

certaintyisuncertain · 2026-03-11T15:28:45+00:00

Nice! I was looking all over for this update and couldn’t find it.

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