What fun to use AI to design a Tower Defense game (ASCII). It’s been a few thousand versions. The creation started in Claude, but quickly overwhelmed its limits (I HATE those limits, Claude). The bulk of the work has been done in ChatGPT, which handles updates to the code that take too long with a pause, and a question, “Continue Generating?” YES, of course.

I tried making updates using Google’s Gemini Advanced, but it failed miserably. It wouldn’t accept uploads, made some code optimizations that didn’t work, and I gave up on it after a few tries. Back to ChatGPT.

Of course, since I am unable to program or code at all, I’m grateful that I can now pretend at it using AI tools. The real challenge for me? Imagining how I want to customize the game in ways that make sense. Having played countless hours of Tower Defense games growing up, I’m struck by how satisfying it is to play a game I offered feedback to the AI on. Isn’t that silly?

Maybe not. Some how, I imagine some summer camp for K-12 students where they are designing games by instructing the AI to do their bidding. It’s not as far fetched now as it once was.

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