I've built a multiplayer survival game for the browser in 30 days and I didnt write a single line of code 🤯
So I'd like to write my notes about it once the deadline is done now.
The last 20% of a project is indeed the hardest part of it all.
In the last 2 days i've been working on the final version of Hollowlands for @levelsio's 2026 #vibejam
I worked a lot! I fixed a lot of bugs, tested a lot playing with my wife. Fixed more bugs...
But now, thank God, I have the final result!
The game looks good, yes. I've spent half of the jam just tweaking every single detail of the procedural world generation. And It was worth it!
The game still runs well on most devices and still has less than 20MB in size. Which is pretty impressive to me.
The process of building was very straighforward:
1. I used @threejs + React to create the game. Before I started I created a huge document defining every rule i'd like the codebase to be implemented upon. It had clean code rules, archtecture decisions, ECS principles (good for games), and so on. This helped a lot constrain the AI to maintain the code maintainable and separated into clear domains (systems). This document was made partially by me given my previous experience building web games (I've made a lot of mistakes in the past and made sure they will not repeat again) and partially AI suggesting best practices.
2. For every feature I prompted the AI, I was very specific on details that I'd like implemented. If I knew what I was doing, I was more specific on the "how" I wanted to be done. If I didnt know what was doing I first asked the AI to brainstorm possibilities with me, based on industry standards, pros and cons, and so on. Then I would decide what path to go.
3. Every single feature I used Leva for tweaking the values. So for example, the size of the trees, colors, distance between objects, animation speed, etc. Everything I have a slider that I can adjust.
4. To make the game look good I used @tripoai to create the models. To be honest it's not 100% perfect. If you check the character in game you can notice a few issues here and there (the arms lol), but I believe that it will keep getting better over time. 1 Year ago I tried and it wasnt even close to what it's now. Then I used a few post-processing + shaders + particles techniques to bring the "wow" factor.
5. I did only 1 feature at a time. And every change it was a commit with a clear message of what was done. This helped the AI fetch previous commit to understand what changed and know exactly what happened in the past. If I opened multiple terminals at once and blasted prompts the code and commit history would be a mess in a few days. And for every change the AI did, I asked it to do a Code Review of everything that was changed and look for violations on the document I wrote in the beggining defining the codebase guidelines. I realized that I pretty much applied software engineer principles using AI: Code, review and merge, code, review and merge...
6. On the last week I implemented the multiplayer using @colyseus which was pretty nice. I used AI to fetch the whole documentation and create a skill.md file that helped a lot. The creator of the framework @endel also did a extensive research on how real multiplayer games are implemented. It's open source and it was a gold mine for the AI to come up with the implementation for my game. You can ask him the link :)
And that was it I think. I'm extremely tired now. The last 2 days was insane.
The game's final version is not what I had in mind in the beginning of the jam. I had to cut a lot of cool features. But given the 30 days deadline I think it was a huge success. Hands down my best game ever made.
Now I'll take a few days to rest and come back with more updates on the game. Maybe it can become a big deal in the future with more updates. Who knows.
And in the event I win first place in this game jam, I'll use the money to fund my own game studio + cover the expenses of my child that is going to be born in September :)
Cheers guys! If you have any question, feel free to reach out. I'll answer every non-bot comment in here haha
Note: The link to play is in my profile
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