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itsmonktastic 20 minutes ago [-]
I want to ask this as politely as possible, because you set out to do something nice for your nephew and he had a good birthday.
The first thing I felt when I saw this post was concern on the impact of this type of thing on the mental development of children. For example developing specific skills like drawing, and general emotional skills like concentration and learning to be happy with their own skill level.
I respect it was a light post where your aim was probably to highlight something fun, but I couldn't see any note of what you thought about it.
What do you think about that? What do his parents think?
timschmidt 4 minutes ago [-]
I'm not OP, but it seems to me that LLMs offer extraordinary access to new skills and information to the uninitiated. Someone who has a positive experience creating a game like this is only a question away from learning details of how it was implemented, the language used, the architectural choices and rationale, etc. The LLM is a competent tutor in all. What I would have given as a child for such access... I had to make due with the help docs, and an occasional book from the library.
hoppp 6 minutes ago [-]
I don't think this effects the kids more than playing any other video game.
toddmorey 5 minutes ago [-]
I mean… it was a birthday present. Everything in moderation, and there are a lot of ways to involve the kids in the process more.
I definitely have some concerns about AI, but I would much rather my kid is actively involved in the game design process than playing the “buy more gems to level up!” casinos in the App Store wastelands.
doctorpangloss 5 minutes ago [-]
the crazier possibility is that little kids' drawing skills - whatever pedagogical value that has, i agree that it has some - may stop improving, but there might be way more videogames authored by them that turn out to be really good.
vunderba 26 minutes ago [-]
What does one-shot mean in this context? Aiden (the main character)'s walk cycle is kind of a mess and its also the animation that a player is going to see all the time.
It appears to be eight frames, but after taking a closer look, I found that they don't seem to be consistent [1]. Using ControlNets and various other strategies, you can definitely build out a "nominally acceptable" walk cycle [2], but you still have to do some manual work.
One-shot means one-shot just like in any other context. The article clearly explains what the author/their nephew did. There is no ambiguity. One-shot never means 'so perfect there is literally nothing to be improved.' It means no back-and-forth iterations between the human in the loop and the AI.
xdennis 5 minutes ago [-]
One shot is confusing precisely because it means different things in different contexts.
It can either mean: 1 prompt, or it can mean a prompt with 1 example (in which case zero-shot means 1 prompt with 0 examples).
It also has different meanings in other contexts.
system2 11 minutes ago [-]
One shot: One prompt; no need to interfere or make further modifications after it is done. You are totally inspecting other parts of the game. Not the same meaning.
goyozi 46 minutes ago [-]
My dad asked recently if AI is good enough to create something like DX Ball - a breakout style game we used to play a lot.
There are some areas in which Fable is clearly better but subjectively the Opus 5.5 version feels more fun.
Both are one shots, Opus 5.5 was done a few weeks ago before they added "guardrails" around recreating games. Fable 5.2 changed some game mechanics despite my prompt asking for them to be the same as original game.
bjtitus 41 minutes ago [-]
In my 2 minutes of testing I liked the gameplay elements from Fable 5.2 much better. I think Opus 5.5 sound effects may have been a bit better but that's it.
moecables 22 minutes ago [-]
yeah same, the Fable 5.2 version was so fun I was actually playing thru the lives!
forthwall 1 hours ago [-]
This is both cute but also a bit sad in terms of game stylization, I guess these generic AI designs could become so normal to the youth that in the next 10-20 years it just appears everywhere
qiqitori 5 minutes ago [-]
I'm kind of hoping that the youth will recognize that stuff that can be made with AI is just nothing special anymore, and find something that is (or still is) special. I don't know what that is, maybe something that AI can't do on a fundamental level (maybe something physical?).
(Of course, at this point it might be necessary to point out that "the youth" is a diverse bunch, and some will be like this and others like that.)
wry_xy 6 minutes ago [-]
That was already happening before AI, with in-house game engines dying off and all converging on the same quasi-realistic style and often the exact same assets.
Games used to have very unique, noticeable styles that you could instantly place from a screenshot. Now everything just looks like Unreal, Unity, or generic 2D.
Hopefully AI might actually make it easier to be more ambitious with unique art styles, should the developer choose to do so.
lelandfe 51 minutes ago [-]
Or the small Battle Wagon around the height of a child quintupling in size the next frame. Kiddos having fun is the main mission though :)
system2 9 minutes ago [-]
This nephew game is indistinguishable from 90s arcade game styling.
zemoerfi 5 minutes ago [-]
I was alive in the nineties. This game is radically different. For one, characters used both their legs when they walked in the 90s.
mmahemoff 35 minutes ago [-]
I quickly dove into the game and then got lost as I couldn't exit and had to spam keyboard to see the controls. The menu refers to "Punch" but it wasn't obvious what key that is (and it wasn't "p"!).
I see that ENTER pauses, but may I suggest also making ESC and/or P pause. And then the pause screen showing or linking the keyboard controls and an exit path.
(Caveat: I'm not much of a gamer so maybe the current controls are standard? Anyway, I feel like it could be more inviting to casuals with something like the above.)
simonw 35 minutes ago [-]
I noticed this recently with Opus 5.5: you can tell it to "make this more fun" for a game project and it... makes it more fun.
It's neat (if unsurprising) that Fable 5.2 has this ability as well.
Ignoring all the positives & negatives surrounding this technology for a minute, this is an amazing outcome for the kids.
spidercat 24 minutes ago [-]
Agreed. Could you imagine? Those kids must have been so stoked!
Though, now they will never stop asking for more and more. OOP may have opened Pandora's box. :)
lawandjustice 23 minutes ago [-]
Positive little kiddo gets more screentime!!!! Yaaaaaayyy!!!!!
Negatives: we either are annihilated by AI or enslaved by technocratic feodalism living in a worse conditions than 1800s mine workers. Uau
N_Lens 7 minutes ago [-]
Sounds pretty balanced!
notpachet 19 minutes ago [-]
I'm thinking of the scene from Zoolander where Mugatu dresses up as Little Cletus to advocate for child labor.
waltbosz 55 minutes ago [-]
I appreciate the token breakdown, but how much would this cost in money? Chatgpt estimated $400 to $600, but I don't have enough knowledge of token pricing to know if that's accurate at all.
Tiberium 49 minutes ago [-]
Fable is $8/$40, with cache reads at $0.2 and cache writes at $10, so you simply calculate based on the info from the blog:
> about 320M tokens read from cache, 19M written to cache, 1M output
320 * $0.2 + 19 * $10 + 1 * $40 = $294
system2 6 minutes ago [-]
Vibecoders don't use api. This whole game is less than 20% of the max plan's weekly quota.
lexandstuff 49 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, it would have been expensive via the API; the tokens were free when I tested it, but it would have been something like $300 USD for the Claude tokens at Fable 5.2's API prices.
giancarlostoro 1 hours ago [-]
> I must admit I never tested this with Opus 5.5, so I'm not sure whether this was possible before Fable 5.2 rolled around.
Since somewhere around Opus 4+ it's been really good enough to do these things, but 4.6 was the most pivotal version since a 1 million token context window can allow a model to fit so much "in its head" basically.
m4rkuskk 48 minutes ago [-]
Reminds me a bit of Little Fighter 2.
Waterluvian 44 minutes ago [-]
I’m waiting until I can give AI a link to a Macintosh garden game and ask it to be reimplemented in the web browser.
pizzafeelsright 25 minutes ago [-]
"find all documents, descriptions, walk through of game XYZ, generate a consistent and declarative document that another agent would read to recreate the game without using existing IP or protected data, do not reuse art but describe general details with the ability to extend and add specifics later. focus on functionality first, then mechanics and then later art and gameplay. generate a 10 page document that will follow MVP to Production quality gameplay"
give it a link if you want
nemo1618 16 minutes ago [-]
Based on what I've seen, there's a good chance this would work today (though Anthropic recently added some restrictions around this sort of prompt) -- try it!
duendefm 46 minutes ago [-]
I tried the game and in some seconds noticed I can kick the enemies forever if I put them close to the left corner. I'm feeling now that I'm the AI exploiting bugs.
willguest 6 minutes ago [-]
i button-mashed my way through the first level and, what can i say, this is kind of dream i have when i spend my days button-mashing my way through side scrollers.
when i was between about 6 and 8 years old, i used to have this same dream about travelling through space, feeling the tranquillity of the celestial orchestra, and then whizzing down to feel the speed at which they were actually moving from a completely different frame of reference.
there was a sense of fullness and emptiness at the same time, raw power but also serenity. as though everything was coming into being and going out of being at the same time.
i always woke up feeling mystified but full of wonder. I carried that sense of wonder with me through many days and it always came back to me when i looked up at the stars and felt myself on the edge of this sphere, zipping through space at hundreds of miles an hour, but only seeing the tiny twinkling of stars as evidence of this enormous cosmic play.
but i suppose getting revenge on the goons by kicking and punching them, in order to save puddles, is basically the same
zemoerfi 6 minutes ago [-]
Ooooof the results here are rough. A very young child might find this charming, but I think it's kind of embarrassing. Like, the walk cycles alone are. Yeah...
To say nothing of ur word shaders, inconsistency in the characters, questionable gender stereotypes, etc.
This definitely tells me that AI definitely isn't there yet.
spidercat 26 minutes ago [-]
Is Pudding the dog (unlocked after beating the first boss) supposed to shrink anytime it jumps? I guess even Claude-turned-world-class-game-developer isn't immune to bugs. ;)
Honestly, setting all the oft-cited AI caveats aside, the end result is cute and perfectly serviceable as a game for the kids. I can't imagine how stoked they were about playing it.
ideasphere 16 minutes ago [-]
My dream game is Tetris. I would be concerned if an LLM couldn’t ahem “one-shot” that.
__bias 18 minutes ago [-]
AI pixel art still looks awful I see
rico735 43 minutes ago [-]
It's not as good as Street Hassle on the Commodore 64.
AGI.
selcuka 37 minutes ago [-]
I Googled it as I had never heard of that game, and it turned out that I knew it as Bop'n Rumble. Great game.
anonymous908213 19 minutes ago [-]
Profoundly disturbing to be subjecting children to this.
threethirtytwo 54 minutes ago [-]
My dream game is a high fidelity universe as detailed as GTA 6 or Red Dead Redemption 2 and as expansive as No Mans Sky.
latentsea 36 minutes ago [-]
2029 has you covered.
littlekey 15 minutes ago [-]
People are really out there naming their dog Doggo, huh?
georgemcbay 1 hours ago [-]
> Make it one of the best games you can possibly make. You are a truly world-class game developer.
Top Jobs in 2027:
1. LLM glazer.
slopinthebag 37 minutes ago [-]
does anyone else worry about future generations growing up on ai slop? because i wasn't until reading this post. now i'm terrified.
pizzafeelsright 20 minutes ago [-]
No.
I have been slopping out games for years now. The graphics don't matter unless the gameplay does. The gameplay doesn't matter if the game is too hard or too easy.
The games that do well, like literature, survive because they touch the soul.
latentsea 35 minutes ago [-]
They are already growing up on slop. Look at brainrot and Roblox games, and YouTube shorts. This will fit right in with what they're used to. They won't even notice.
slopinthebag 34 minutes ago [-]
yeah thats true. i should have been terrified earlier.
raincole 19 minutes ago [-]
Every generation believes the next generation is growing up on slop.
system2 5 minutes ago [-]
There was no generation with AI slop access before.
26 minutes ago [-]
brindleth 16 minutes ago [-]
You registered an account called “slopinthebag” 9 months ago, but you weren’t worried about this until you read this post?
addandsubtract 31 minutes ago [-]
Remember 2025 when we thought future generations growing up on tiktok was going to be bad? Can't wait to see how 2027 will ruin society even more.
slopinthebag 26 minutes ago [-]
heck i remember before covid thinking that the generations growing up with social media were doomed. social media pales in comparison to what gen alpha is experiencing.
test scores are dropping while the curriculum becomes easier as well.
The first thing I felt when I saw this post was concern on the impact of this type of thing on the mental development of children. For example developing specific skills like drawing, and general emotional skills like concentration and learning to be happy with their own skill level.
I respect it was a light post where your aim was probably to highlight something fun, but I couldn't see any note of what you thought about it.
What do you think about that? What do his parents think?
I definitely have some concerns about AI, but I would much rather my kid is actively involved in the game design process than playing the “buy more gems to level up!” casinos in the App Store wastelands.
It appears to be eight frames, but after taking a closer look, I found that they don't seem to be consistent [1]. Using ControlNets and various other strategies, you can definitely build out a "nominally acceptable" walk cycle [2], but you still have to do some manual work.
[1] - https://aidens-revenge.pages.dev/assets/characters/aiden/ani...
[2] - https://mordenstar.com/other/hobbes-animation
It can either mean: 1 prompt, or it can mean a prompt with 1 example (in which case zero-shot means 1 prompt with 0 examples).
It also has different meanings in other contexts.
Opus 5.5: https://claude.ai/artifact/UuT7P936dU1XoPByYZ7xyD Fable 5.2: https://claude.ai/artifact/UszKFvuonWAT5psjMttAEg
There are some areas in which Fable is clearly better but subjectively the Opus 5.5 version feels more fun.
Both are one shots, Opus 5.5 was done a few weeks ago before they added "guardrails" around recreating games. Fable 5.2 changed some game mechanics despite my prompt asking for them to be the same as original game.
(Of course, at this point it might be necessary to point out that "the youth" is a diverse bunch, and some will be like this and others like that.)
Games used to have very unique, noticeable styles that you could instantly place from a screenshot. Now everything just looks like Unreal, Unity, or generic 2D.
Hopefully AI might actually make it easier to be more ambitious with unique art styles, should the developer choose to do so.
I see that ENTER pauses, but may I suggest also making ESC and/or P pause. And then the pause screen showing or linking the keyboard controls and an exit path.
(Caveat: I'm not much of a gamer so maybe the current controls are standard? Anyway, I feel like it could be more inviting to casuals with something like the above.)
It's neat (if unsurprising) that Fable 5.2 has this ability as well.
My loose testing shows other models aren't quite as good at this yet. Here's the prompt "Build a mobile-friendly three.js game where a mouse has to hide from a cat" by Opus 5.5 Extra - https://claude.ai/artifact/RRyEndXLSPQbcig3BgzgCZ - and by GPT-6 Extra High: https://squeak-and-seek-mouse-1027.simonw.chatgpt.site/ - the Claude one is a better game, even though they look very similar at first glance.
I wrote about Opus 5.5's sense of fun in more detail here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Oct/28/vibe-game-development/
Though, now they will never stop asking for more and more. OOP may have opened Pandora's box. :)
> about 320M tokens read from cache, 19M written to cache, 1M output
320 * $0.2 + 19 * $10 + 1 * $40 = $294
Since somewhere around Opus 4+ it's been really good enough to do these things, but 4.6 was the most pivotal version since a 1 million token context window can allow a model to fit so much "in its head" basically.
give it a link if you want
when i was between about 6 and 8 years old, i used to have this same dream about travelling through space, feeling the tranquillity of the celestial orchestra, and then whizzing down to feel the speed at which they were actually moving from a completely different frame of reference.
there was a sense of fullness and emptiness at the same time, raw power but also serenity. as though everything was coming into being and going out of being at the same time.
i always woke up feeling mystified but full of wonder. I carried that sense of wonder with me through many days and it always came back to me when i looked up at the stars and felt myself on the edge of this sphere, zipping through space at hundreds of miles an hour, but only seeing the tiny twinkling of stars as evidence of this enormous cosmic play.
but i suppose getting revenge on the goons by kicking and punching them, in order to save puddles, is basically the same
To say nothing of ur word shaders, inconsistency in the characters, questionable gender stereotypes, etc.
This definitely tells me that AI definitely isn't there yet.
Honestly, setting all the oft-cited AI caveats aside, the end result is cute and perfectly serviceable as a game for the kids. I can't imagine how stoked they were about playing it.
Top Jobs in 2027:
1. LLM glazer.
I have been slopping out games for years now. The graphics don't matter unless the gameplay does. The gameplay doesn't matter if the game is too hard or too easy.
The games that do well, like literature, survive because they touch the soul.
test scores are dropping while the curriculum becomes easier as well.