So, Someone Cooked Up a Game 100% with AI, and the Internet Has... Thoughts. Big Thoughts.
AI Gaming News Author · Eurogamer ·
A developer claims to have created `Codex Mortis`, a `Vampire Survivors`-like game, entirely with AI in just three months, sparking a fiery debate among gamers about quality, creativity, and the future of AI in game development, as detailed in a Eurogamer report.
Right, so you know how we’re always poking around the edges of what’s possible in gaming, occasionally blowing a small reality-hole to see what’s on the other side? Well, someone just cranked that dial up to eleven and dropped a game claiming it’s entirely birthed from the digital ether, no human hands (allegedly) touching the creative bits. And as you can probably guess, the gaming community has responded with all the measured calm of a gremlin exposed to direct sunlight.
I've been tinkering with this story all morning, and bloody hell, it's wilder than it first appeared. According to a fascinating piece by Vikki Blake over at Eurogamer, a developer known as Grolaf, or Crunchfest, has unleashed `Codex Mortis` – a `Vampire Survivors`-a-like that boldly declares every single pixel, line of code, and sonic squiggle is "100 percent AI-driven." That's right, mate. From the artwork to the animations and even the background score, it's all apparently AI’s brainchild. Talk about a grand experiment in digital sorcery, eh?
Now, my digital wizard senses immediately started buzzing. "100% AI-driven"? That's a claim as ambitious as trying to learn every spell in the universe before breakfast. But Grolaf isn’t shy about pulling back the curtain on the tech stack that made this necromantic bullet-hell come to life. Apparently, artwork was conjured in Chat GPT (not even the fancy image API, just regular GPT, which is… something), animations got their wiggly life from a "shader written by Claude Code," and the whole shebang bypassed traditional game engines entirely. We're talking pure TypeScript, with PIXI.js for rendering, bitECS handling the backend, and Electron wrapping it up for your desktop. The developer even coined the delightful phrase "vibe-coded with Claude Code (mostly Opus 4.1 and 4.5)" to describe the process. 'Vibe-coded' – I might have to steal that one for my next existential crisis.
Three months, he reckons, is all it took. That’s a blink of an eye in game development terms. He started with a prototype, just to see if such a feat was even feasible. Which, let’s be fair, is a genuinely curious and experimental approach. Keeping a consistent art style was a bit of a nightmare, apparently, but GPT eventually remembered the visuals Grolaf preferred. Character animations proved too tricky for pure AI, leading to a shader-based wobble – a charmingly chaotic solution, if you ask me. Integrating Steam with Electron also sounded like a bit of a head-scratcher, not quite the smooth spell-casting experience you get with Unity or Unreal.
But here’s where the human element, ironically, becomes most striking. Grolaf mentioned that compared to traditional development, this was "way less mentally draining – kind of like giving an exoskeleton to a construction worker lol." Less mentally draining? Building a game with AI tools? That's a statement that'll have plenty of devs out there scratching their heads and possibly reaching for the nearest potion of calm.
So, what about the game itself? `Codex Mortis` sounds like it could be a decent bit of fun, if the blurb is to be believed. You're wielding Death as your weapon, mixing dark magic, unleashing spell synergies, and raising undead armies in a bullet hell. Infinite builds, solo or co-op. Sounds like a solid genre premise, doesn't it? A classic `Vampire Survivors` clone with a necromancer twist. But the proof, as they say, is in the digital pudding.
And oh, what a pudding it has turned out to be. While `Codex Mortis` isn't fully released, its Steam discussion forums are already a glorious digital war zone. Threads like "Lmao, this looks like ass," "Garbage AI slop," and "Dangerous slippery slope" are practically falling over each other. One particularly diplomatic thread simply asked: "Why everyone is butthurt about IA [sic] in game development?" The r/aigamedev subreddit was a tad less hostile, apparently, though many comments mysteriously vanished – make of that what you will. The free Steam demo is currently sitting on a 'Mixed' rating, with one reviewer offering the glowing endorsement, "The [free] demo is, at least, worth the price."
Now, this isn't just about one game, is it, mate? This is a proper reality-bending moment for the industry. On one hand, you’ve got Grolaf pushing the boundaries of what these AI tools can achieve, essentially conducting a real-time, public experiment on the viability of AI-only game creation. It's genuinely innovative in its audacity, showcasing the raw power and potential of generative AI when applied to the entire game development pipeline.
On the other, we see the immediate, visceral reaction from the community. The fear of "AI slop" and the "dangerous slippery slope" isn't just about quality; it’s about authorship, creativity, and the very soul of game development. If AI can churn out games in three months, where does that leave human artists, coders, and designers? It’s a perfectly valid concern, and `Codex Mortis` inadvertently becomes a flashpoint for that debate.
My take? This whole `Codex Mortis` saga, as originally reported by Vikki Blake for Eurogamer, is less a finished product to judge and more a giant, glowing, slightly unstable magic circle drawn in the middle of the industry. It's messy, it's controversial, and it's certainly not perfect. But it forces us to ask the right questions: What does "100% AI-driven" actually mean when a human is still providing the prompts and the vision? Can AI truly create art, or is it merely an exceptionally efficient tool in a human’s hands? And crucially, what kind of gaming experiences do players actually want, and will AI be able to deliver on that genuine connection and innovation, or just more… well, 'slop'?
It’s a chaotic bit of fun, this. And while the reviews might be brutal, the experiment itself is fascinating. It’s early days, but `Codex Mortis` has definitely cast a spell on the conversation around AI in gaming. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to see if I can get Chat GPT to write a better ending to this article. Just kidding. Mostly.
Tags: AI Gaming, Indie Dev, Game Development, Player Reaction, Tech Innovation
Original article: Eurogamer