alt Hacker NewsFable 5.2 one-shotted my nephew's dream game
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I used my $200 free fable 5.1 credits to build a WhatsApp sticker maker, it created a version I was not happy with, but it burned the 200 in one sitting. Node.js app, vue frontend, etc.
I didn't used the project a lot since I kind of hate it on how much was spend.
Last week I used just a little bit of my $20 pro account to build a replacement with rust end to end, just to gain some experience with the rust hype. Very happy with the result, not perfect but snappier, and even better: a single executable, I no longer need to fire up a backend and front service separately.
My dad asked recently if AI is good enough to create something like DX Ball - a breakout style game we used to play a lot.
Opus 5.5: https://claude.ai/artifact/UuT7P936dU1XoPByYZ7xyD Fable 5.2: https://claude.ai/artifact/UszKFvuonWAT5psjMttAEg
There are some areas in which Fable is clearly better but subjectively the Opus 5.5 version feels more fun.
Both are one shots, Opus 5.5 was done a few weeks ago before they added "guardrails" around recreating games. Fable 5.2 changed some game mechanics despite my prompt asking for them to be the same as original game.
I have experienced this myself, although the novelty kind of wears off after a while. It is still fun to make small games to co-op on the TV.
Yes, hard to believe but most of these games can be almost one-shotted in my experience, with bugs but still playable. We are not talking about some properly made games but imagine for a second that there are some number of casual players out there that wont mind spending 30 minutes on a game for just a bit of fun and having these just materialised just in time is a lot more convenient then hunting for them on the app stores.
For anyone interested, I put all of of my work into an open source tool that uses your iPhone as a console which then can cast on your TV. Up-to 4 local players supported. It can even run proper games via WASM. It is Apple Silicon only.
What does one-shot mean in this context? Aiden (the main character)'s walk cycle is kind of a mess and its also the animation that a player is going to see all the time.
It appears to be eight frames, but after taking a closer look, I found that they don't seem to be consistent [1]. Using ControlNets and various other strategies, you can definitely build out a "nominally acceptable" walk cycle [2], but you still have to do some manual work.
[1] - https://aidens-revenge.pages.dev/assets/characters/aiden/ani...
This is awesome, but I don't get the repeated use of the term "one-shot". There were many human-driven requests and iterations, and this is illustrated in the blog post.
This really was more like a normal person had access to a game developer team (with artists and musicians) and had a custom game built based on interviews and playtesting.
Ignoring all the positives & negatives surrounding this technology for a minute, this is an amazing outcome for the kids.
What I wonder reading that would be how much more effort to actually port it to the PlayStation, or whatever game console. I recently asked my local AI to make an ebook reader for my Gameboy pocket ;) I just think about all the cross collaboration of devices for stuff we can only imagine.
I quickly dove into the game and then got lost as I couldn't exit and had to spam keyboard to see the controls. The menu refers to "Punch" but it wasn't obvious what key that is (and it wasn't "p"!).
I see that ENTER pauses, but may I suggest also making ESC and/or P pause. And then the pause screen showing or linking the keyboard controls and an exit path.
(Caveat: I'm not much of a gamer so maybe the current controls are standard? Anyway, I feel like it could be more inviting to casuals with something like the above.)
I appreciate the token breakdown, but how much would this cost in money? Chatgpt estimated $400 to $600, but I don't have enough knowledge of token pricing to know if that's accurate at all.
This is both cute but also a bit sad in terms of game stylization, I guess these generic AI designs could become so normal to the youth that in the next 10-20 years it just appears everywhere
> I must admit I never tested this with Opus 5.5, so I'm not sure whether this was possible before Fable 5.2 rolled around.
Since somewhere around Opus 4+ it's been really good enough to do these things, but 4.6 was the most pivotal version since a 1 million token context window can allow a model to fit so much "in its head" basically.
This is phenomenal. Great work, dude. Man the fun my brother and I would have had in the old days with this stuff. It looks absolutely fantastic.
It’s a lot of fun to build games. I started building little pieces of one[0], then a builder for it, then a story, then a video recorder. And there’s a lot more iterations in the roadmap. It’s great as a creative outlet
It’s not one shotted anymore or course. But in the process, it’s also cool one-shotting new features or experimenting with variations of things very quickly
Eventually it becomes similar to any longer lasting project. Complexity starts creeping in, maybe technical debt, and managing everything to keep it consistent/coherent slowly starts taking most of the time. And I’m not maintaining it for real active users, which would also become some other type of project
Reminds me a bit of Little Fighter 2.
I noticed this recently with Opus 5.5: you can tell it to "make this more fun" for a game project and it... makes it more fun.
It's neat (if unsurprising) that Fable 5.2 has this ability as well.
My loose testing shows other models aren't quite as good at this yet. Here's the prompt "Build a mobile-friendly three.js game where a mouse has to hide from a cat" by Opus 5.5 Extra - https://claude.ai/artifact/RRyEndXLSPQbcig3BgzgCZ - and by GPT-6 Extra High: https://squeak-and-seek-mouse-1027.simonw.chatgpt.site/ - the Claude one is a better game, even though they look very similar at first glance.
Update: took it about 40 minutes but here's Fable 5.2 Extra's attempt at the same prompt: https://claude.ai/artifact/Agsqbng2MnkTPAU67it87o
I wrote about Opus 5.5's sense of fun in more detail here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Oct/28/vibe-game-development/
I’m waiting until I can give AI a link to a Macintosh garden game and ask it to be reimplemented in the web browser.
Just a small suggestion on the prompt. I usually also add something like "Bring in a critical Art Director, Animator, UX Expert, Staff Engineer. Don't release the game until they all agree it's AAA quality." I wonder if that would have helped with some of the issues/bugs others called out. I do this with Codex and it's been working really well and not using many tokens.
jfc people on here don’t like to have fun. This is one of the best applications of AI I’ve ever seen. It is allowing for creativity — the kid drew all the bosses, thought out the progression of the game, and now gets to see it come to life. How many times as a child did you fantasize about a video game you wanted, and all it ever was was a fantasy? How goddang cool would it be if it was made real? How much more would that make you want to continue imagining and creating? It is touching — the game incorporates all the members of his extended family, even his passed-on great grandmother who appears as an angel character. How many of you even know your great grandmother’s names? Now his is living on eternally in his awesome video game. It is something this kid will be talking about to all his friends at school, and reminiscing on with all his family when he grows up. Who cares whether the code was made human or a machine? Let the kids have some fucking fun
Crazy good
I tried the game and in some seconds noticed I can kick the enemies forever if I put them close to the left corner. I'm feeling now that I'm the AI exploiting bugs.
Did anyone notice that the game characters looked nothing like the drawings lol
Is Pudding the dog (unlocked after beating the first boss) supposed to shrink anytime it jumps? I guess even Claude-turned-world-class-game-developer isn't immune to bugs. ;)
Honestly, setting all the oft-cited AI caveats aside, the end result is cute and perfectly serviceable as a game for the kids. I can't imagine how stoked they were about playing it.
Cool! Fun! Derivative.
Nothing wrong with derivative but of course it's going to excel in well trodden areas.
i button-mashed my way through the first level and, what can i say, this is kind of dream i have when i spend my days button-mashing my way through side scrollers.
when i was between about 6 and 8 years old, i used to have this same dream about travelling through space, feeling the tranquillity of the celestial orchestra, and then whizzing down to feel the speed at which they were actually moving from a completely different frame of reference.
there was a sense of fullness and emptiness at the same time, raw power but also serenity. as though everything was coming into being and going out of being at the same time.
i always woke up feeling mystified but full of wonder. I carried that sense of wonder with me through many days and it always came back to me when i looked up at the stars and felt myself on the edge of this sphere, zipping through space at hundreds of miles an hour, but only seeing the tiny twinkling of stars as evidence of this enormous cosmic play.
but i suppose getting revenge on the goons by kicking and punching them, in order to save puddles, is basically the same
My dream game is Tetris. I would be concerned if an LLM couldn’t ahem “one-shot” that.
It's not as good as Street Hassle on the Commodore 64. AGI.
Cue the "What did it cost" Thanos meme
This sounds so.. dull.
Ooooof the results here are rough. A very young child might find this charming, but I think it's kind of embarrassing. Like, the walk cycles alone are. Yeah...
To say nothing of ur word shaders, inconsistency in the characters, questionable gender stereotypes, etc.
This definitely tells me that AI definitely isn't there yet.
> Make it one of the best games you can possibly make. You are a truly world-class game developer.
Top Jobs in 2027:
1. LLM glazer.
I want to ask this as politely as possible, because you set out to do something nice for your nephew and he had a good birthday.
The first thing I felt when I saw this post was concern on the impact of this type of thing on the mental development of children. For example developing specific skills like drawing, and general emotional skills like concentration and learning to be happy with their own skill level.
I respect it was a light post where your aim was probably to highlight something fun, but I couldn't see any note of what you thought about it.
What do you think about that? What do his parents think?
My dream game is a high fidelity universe as detailed as GTA 6 or Red Dead Redemption 2 and as expansive as No Mans Sky.
You're really letting your kid down here by outsourcing an opportunity to be creative and collaborate to Scam Altcoin.
People are really out there naming their dog Doggo, huh?
does anyone else worry about future generations growing up on ai slop? because i wasn't until reading this post. now i'm terrified.
[dead]
Some parts of this seemed cool, and others made me terribly sad. I am not sure how to express it beyond - I really think inserting hulk as a character was a mistake as you don't have any chance of having intellectual property rights to the character.
On the other hand, it's very much like you photocopied some comic books, cut them out, and did a little home theater thing with them (only with even less effort on your part).
The art is really bad. There's no easy fix for this: today's image models are simply not good enough yet. You can use models for coding, they're good at that thanks to RLVR, but the art still has to be done by humans.
> Fable 5.2 one-shotted my kid’s dream movie, > Fable 5.2 one-shotted my kid’s dream song, > Fable 5.2 one-shotted my kid’s dream storybook,
None of these work, except video games, something qualitatively different about that art form, IDK.
Profoundly disturbing to be subjecting children to this.
"one-shotting" is fun for a low (human) effort toy, but it's a mistake to get overly hung up on LLMs getting everything right on the first try, since a lot of that is the harness and the internal prompting that makes it burn extra tokens to test everything to get it in that one "shot" (ui turn).
While it's nice that LLMs are getting better at arriving at the desired deliverable with fewer surprises (or broken things) doing it is not necessarily a sign that the model is actually smarter, just an indication that what you are doing is likely a well-trodden path for the model, the RL and the harness.