Kategorija: ProjectLog

I’ve been asked a few times whether AI is making this game for me. The short answer is no. If anything, AI made me throw away more ideas than it created. I don’t use ChatGPT to generate code, build levels or write complete stories. There are people doing that and, honestly, it’s impressive. That’s simply not how I use it.

What I discovered over the last couple of weeks is that ChatGPT became something completely different. It became the person you call when you’ve been staring at the same problem for three hours and can’t tell anymore whether your idea is brilliant or completely stupid. Sometimes you just need someone to argue with. ChatGPT is surprisingly good at that because it never gets tired and never gets offended when you tell it that its idea makes no sense.

The funny part is that I rarely ask it to invent something. Most conversations begin with me explaining an idea I already have. Then we start pulling on threads. „What if this happened?” „Why would that system exist?” „Wouldn’t this break that other mechanic?” Before I know it, we’re discussing something that wasn’t even part of the original problem. Quite often we end up deleting the initial idea completely because a much better solution appears somewhere in the middle of the conversation.

Looking back, I don’t think ChatGPT has given me many original ideas. What it has done is force me to justify my own. That’s a much bigger contribution than I expected. It’s very easy to fall in love with your own concepts simply because you’ve spent hours thinking about them. Having something constantly asking „Why?” becomes surprisingly annoying… and surprisingly useful. If I can’t explain why a mechanic exists, maybe it shouldn’t exist. If a story element only sounds cool but doesn’t improve anything else, perhaps it’s not worth keeping.

One thing I also noticed is that our discussions almost never stay in one category. I’d start talking about procedural maps and somehow we’d end up discussing the philosophy of an AI character. We’d move from enemy design to world-building, then back to gameplay, then suddenly realise we’d accidentally solved a progression problem without even trying. At first I thought we were constantly getting distracted. Now I think that’s actually how interconnected design works. Good ideas don’t stay in their own little boxes.

Perhaps the biggest change wasn’t adding anything at all. It was changing how I evaluate ideas. A few months ago my thinking was mostly, „Wouldn’t this be cool?” Now it’s more like, „Does this make three other systems better?” If the answer is no, the idea is probably weaker than I originally thought. That single question has probably removed more content from the project than any design document ever could.

I’m still not convinced this is the right way to develop a game. Maybe experienced game developers will read this and immediately point out ten mistakes I’m making. That’s perfectly fine. I’m not writing these posts because I’ve already succeeded. I’m writing them because I’m figuring things out as I go. If this project eventually becomes something worth playing, these blog posts will be an interesting record of how it happened. If it fails spectacularly, they’ll probably be an equally interesting record of why.

One thing is certain, though. ChatGPT didn’t become my game designer. It became my sparring partner. It doesn’t build the game for me. It keeps punching holes in my ideas until either they collapse or become strong enough to survive. Strangely enough, I think that’s exactly what I needed.

One thing surprised me more than anything else while working on this project.

I always assumed that game development followed a fairly straightforward process. You either start with a story and build mechanics around it, or you build interesting mechanics first and then find a story that explains them.

Apparently, my brain had other plans.

The project didn’t begin with characters or a world. It began with systems. Lots of them. I kept writing down mechanics I genuinely enjoyed in other games and trying to understand why they worked. Some of those ideas stayed. Others were thrown away almost immediately. At the time, none of them had anything to do with each other.

The interesting part came later.

Once enough systems existed, they started asking uncomfortable questions:

Why does this mechanic exist?

Why would a player be doing this?

Why would the world allow it?

At first, I tried answering those questions with more mechanics. That only made things worse. Every new feature solved one problem while creating two more. Eventually I realized that what was missing wasn’t another system—it was context.

That’s when something unexpected happened.

Instead of inventing more gameplay, I started inventing reasons. Not because I wanted to write a story, but because every mechanic needed to belong somewhere. One explanation would suddenly make three different systems feel natural. Then another system would stop making sense, forcing me to rethink the original explanation.

It became a strange feedback loop.

A gameplay mechanic would inspire a piece of world-building.

That world-building would expose weaknesses in another mechanic.

Fixing that mechanic would improve the story.

The improved story would suddenly make another feature feel obvious.

I repeated this process so many times that I honestly stopped knowing which ideas came first. Some mechanics survived because the story needed them. Some story ideas survived because they solved gameplay problems I hadn’t even noticed before.

The biggest lesson I learned is that isolated ideas are rarely interesting. Connections are.

A single mechanic isn’t particularly exciting. A mechanic that explains another mechanic is. A story twist isn’t memorable because it’s surprising; it’s memorable because it suddenly makes previous events feel inevitable.

I’ve found myself deleting ideas much more often than adding them. Not because they were bad, but because they didn’t connect to enough other parts of the project. Every system now has to justify its existence by making several other systems stronger. If it doesn’t, it probably doesn’t belong.

It’s a surprisingly satisfying way to design something. Instead of asking, „What else can I add?” I now ask, „What does this improve?” Sometimes the answer is nothing, and the idea gets discarded. Other times, one small change unexpectedly strengthens half the project.

I’m sure this won’t be the last time I redesign everything from scratch. In fact, I’m almost counting on it.

For now, though, I’ve stopped thinking of game design as collecting features.

It’s more like solving a puzzle where every new piece changes the shape of the entire picture.

However for now, i’m done. Everything explains everything, nothing is missing. No idea, storyline or system is left stupidly hanging in the air.