Vibe Coding a Game: What fly.pieter.com and Vibe Jam Teach About AI-Made Games

Why games are the perfect vibe coding project

Games forgive what business apps don’t. There is no customer data to leak, no billing edge cases, and “it feels wrong” is feedback the AI can act on. You see every change instantly, which suits the prompt, play, tweak loop of vibe coding.

Small browser games also have a long track record of breaking out. Orteil wrote the first version of Cookie Clicker in a single evening in 2013 (source: en.wikipedia.org), Frank Lantz’s Universal Paperclips became a cult hit as a free browser game (source: en.wikipedia.org), and Daniel Benmergui’s free browser game Dragonsweeper spread by word of mouth in 2025 (source: arstechnica.com). None of these were vibe coded, but they show the format: one clever mechanic, playable in seconds. AI tools make that format buildable for people who are not game programmers.

Case study: fly.pieter.com

On February 22, 2025, Pieter Levels, who said he had never made a game before, posted a browser flight simulator he had built entirely with Cursor in about three hours by describing what he wanted. He added that it was not smooth sailing: a few times he had to roll back and ask again (source: x.com). He kept building in public, turning it into a multiplayer world where players see each other in real time.

He monetised it like a website, not a game: brands bought monthly ad placements inside the world, and players bought premium aircraft (the in-game store lists an F-16 at $29.99) (source: fly.pieter.com). On March 11, 2025, 17 days in, he reported $87K in monthly recurring revenue (about $1M ARR), with the in-game ad slots sold as monthly subscriptions, and 320,000 people who had flown in the game, while noting nobody could know if it would last a year (source: x.com).

What to take from it:

• No friction: open a URL and you are flying. No account, no install.
• Build in public: the build itself was the marketing; every new feature was a post.
• Monetise the attention: sponsor slots and cosmetic purchases work when traffic is spiky.
• Simple tech: the site describes itself as a free-to-play MMO flight sim made with AI; Levels is known for keeping his stack minimal across products (source: levels.io).

Vibe Jam: rules, winners and what entries look like

The flight sim led Levels to start Vibe Jam, a game jam for AI-built games. Two editions so far:

(sources: vibejam.com, vibejam.com, vibej.am)

The 2025 winners were The Great Taxi Assignment (gold), Vibeware (silver) and Vector Tango (bronze), and the press page says Andrej Karpathy, who coined “vibe coding”, judged alongside Levels and a panel (sources: vibejam.com, vibejam.com). Multiplayer is popular: the Colyseus team counted 48 entries in 2026 built on its open-source multiplayer framework, about 5% of all submissions (source: colyseus.io).

Even if you never enter, the rules are a good brief for any first game: browser-only, instant start, free, and small enough to finish in a month.

Tools for vibe coding a game

Tony Dinh used almost exactly this stack for Survive 10 Waves, a free top-down 3D browser shooter: Claude Code for nearly all the code, an image model for 2D characters, Meshy to turn them into 3D models, ElevenLabs for sound effects, Suno for an adaptive soundtrack, and Cursor cloud agents for periodic code review (source: news.tonydinh.com). For general tool comparisons, see vibe coding tools.

Step by step: vibe code your first game

1. Write a one-page game spec. The core loop is the whole game at first; everything else is out of scope.
2. Prototype with shapes. Ask for the loop with cubes and circles, no art. If it isn’t fun with shapes, art won’t save it.
3. Tune the feel. Prompt in numbers: “double the jump height”, “enemies 20% faster each wave”, “add 0.1s screen shake on hit”. Play after every change.
4. Commit every good version. Games break in surprising ways; Git or your builder’s history is your save point.
5. Add art and sound once the loop works, with one consistent style prompt for every asset.
6. Keep the code organised. Game files balloon fast. Tony Dinh added a 500-line-per-file rule to his CLAUDE.md after one file passed 3,000 lines.
7. Ship a URL and post short clips of gameplay. Then decide on multiplayer, leaderboards or monetisation based on who actually plays.

# GAME.md

## Pitch
<One sentence: "A 60-second browser game where you ___ to ___.">

## Core loop (must be fun on its own)
1. Player <verb> (controls: <WASD / mouse / one tap>)
2. Game reacts: <score, danger, reward>
3. Difficulty rises by <speed / enemies / time limit>
4. Run ends when <condition>; show score + "play again" in one click

## Tech
- Engine: <three.js for 3D | Phaser for 2D | plain canvas>
- Runs in the browser: no login, no install, no loading screen over ~2 seconds
- One HTML entry, assets under 10 MB total for v1
- Multiplayer: <none in v1 | websockets via Colyseus or a small Node server>

## Art and sound
- Style: <low-poly / pixel / flat shapes> (placeholders first, real assets later)
- Sources: <AI image + 3D model tools, AI sound effects and music>

## Out of scope for v1
- Accounts, menus beyond start/restart, settings, save files, monetization

## Done means
- A stranger understands the goal within 5 seconds and plays 3 runs in a row.
- 60 fps on a mid-range laptop; playable on mobile or clearly says desktop only.

Read GAME.md. Build only the core loop with placeholder shapes (cubes, circles), no art.
Use <three.js / Phaser> from a CDN in a single index.html + main.js.
Include: player movement, one obstacle or enemy type, a score, game over, and instant restart.
Keep game state in one object and the update loop in one function so we can extend it.
When done, tell me how to run it locally and what to tweak to make it harder.

More prompt patterns, including bug reports and a reset prompt for when the AI loops, are in our vibe coding prompts guide.

More vibe-coded games from indie makers

• Julie French, a former social media manager who taught herself to build with AI tools, is making BuilderBlitz, a 60-second arcade game where makers play to rank their product on leaderboards (source: x.com).
• Jacob Teague’s public challenge to vibe code 100 apps includes a game, Dice Heist City, alongside his utility apps (source: 100apps.app).
• Dan Kulkov, who could not code when he started, lists Dan Dan Games, a set of browser games, among the products he is vibe coding toward a $10K MRR goal (source: dankul.com).
• Tony Dinh’s Survive 10 Waves (above) is headed for Steam and the App Store, a path from free browser game to paid release.

Game jams have launched careers long before AI: Maddy Thorson made Celeste Classic in a four-day jam, the seed of Celeste (source: en.wikipedia.org). A vibe jam entry can be the same kind of seed. Find more AI-built products in apps built with AI, or browse Vibe Jam 2025 entries for inspiration.

Can a vibe-coded game make money?

Sometimes, and usually not the way traditional games do. fly.pieter.com earned from sponsors and cosmetic planes on top of a free game, riding attention from Levels’ audience. Other paths:

• Prizes and visibility: Vibe Jam paid $17,500 in 2025 and offered $40,000 for the top three in 2026, and entries get seen by a large builder audience.
• Sponsorships and ads on a viral browser game, as above.
• Premium versions on Steam or app stores once a free version proves people play it.
• Marketing for something else: a game that ranks products, like BuilderBlitz, or a playable demo that promotes your main app.

Treat your first game as practice and as a portfolio piece. If you want a revenue-first project instead, see vibe coding ideas that make money.