Want To Learn To Vibe Code? Start By Making The Video Game Of Your Dreams

This article, written by Ben Sherry, was originally published on Inc.com.

Vibe coding has sparked a technological revolution, and has produced some of the fastest-growing products in the history of tech, including Claude Code, Codex, Lovable, and Replit.

Vibe coding is the process of directing an artificial intelligence (AI) agent to develop a piece of software, and then just letting the agent write the code. Platforms like Claude Code give skilled engineers superpowers, and enable even non-technical entrepreneurs to build tools, apps, and websites. 

So why haven’t more people jumped on the vibe-coding bandwagon? In part, it’s because vibe coding platforms have a steep learning curve, and aren’t very good at onboarding new users. It’s not always immediately obvious what you can do with the tech. 

In my experience, as someone who has been covering the AI industry on a daily basis for nearly four years, the best way to learn vibe coding is to make something specific to your own interests. A small, browser-based game is a great way to get a taste of vibe coding; it’s low-stakes, has nothing to do with your business, and allows you to easily see how your interactions with the AI agent change the software. Plus, it’s fun. 

For this exercise, we’re going to use the Claude desktop app on Mac computers, with a $20 pro subscription. I ran the entire conversation out of Dispatch, a feature that Anthropic recently released that allows Claude to create and edit files on your computer even when messaging Claude from a mobile device. This means you can set Claude to start coding, go on a walk, and continue checking the progress on your phone.

Start with a prompt 

Your first prompt will set the tone for your vibe coding experience, so it’s good to come prepared with a detailed idea of what you want to achieve. Try to imagine a game that appeals to your own niche interests—something that could never exist if you didn’t make it. That specificity will help you come up with the additional detail needed to make the game satisfyingly complex.

For my example, I wanted to try my hand at combining a management simulator with a role-playing game, like Final Fantasy. Here’s the prompt I gave Claude:

“Let’s make a browser-based game called KPI Quest. It’s a management RPG in which you play as an entrepreneur, who has to scale up a business while ensuring that all employees are hitting their goals. You have to set goals for employees, monitor their status, help level them up through upskilling, solve disputes between coworkers, promote people, deal with HR violations, and more, as you build your company to be stronger and larger. I want classic 8-bit pixel graphics like the original Final Fantasy games. Also the game should be mobile/touch compatible. Let’s flesh out the game and brainstorm ways to make the gameplay loop strong.”

Notice how my initial prompt was a bit long? That’s actually a key part of vibe coding: you want to give the AI more to work with, rather than letting it fill in the gaps itself.

In response to the prompt, Claude asked me a few clarifying questions. What should be the key resource that the player has to manage? How does the player win or lose the game? And what’s this game’s version of “combat”? I told Claude that the key resource should be time, that players should win when their company successfully stages a initial public offering (IPO), and that this game’s version of combat should be reviewing key performance indicators (KPIs) and “battling” employees in one-on-one meetings. 

“Not sure how we make that fun and engaging though,” I wrote. “I leave that to you.” 

The vibe-coded first draft

With that, Claude had enough to get started, and opened up a new “background task” in which it developed a much larger, more detailed prompt for KPI Quest and began developing the game. After roughly 10 minutes, Claude sent me an HTML file with the first draft of the game, and it looked pretty cute! 

Claude took my suggestion about time being the key resource and developed Action Points (AP), a system in which the player gets a limited number of points to spend on activities per quarter. Conducting one-on-one with an employee or reviewing the workforce’s KPIs would cost one AP, for example, while hiring a new employee would cost 2 AP and $15k. The challenge of the game was to keep employees’ skill and morale high without burning them out.

Keep iterating 

It was a solid start, but there were some big problems. For one, the game was almost entirely text-based, save for a few pixel figures representing employees. I asked Claude to give the game a visual overhaul, telling the AI that “I wanna see all these cute little pixel guys working in an office together!” By this point, it was late at night, so I prompted Claude to get started, and went to bed.  

When I woke up the next morning and checked my phone, Claude had sent me an updated file featuring a refreshed version of the game, and it looked great. Instead of a wall of text, the game’s screen now featured a pixelated, animated office with all of my company’s virtual employees. As more employees get hired, the office gets bigger.

This version of the game had everything I was looking for: a solid core gameplay loop, a cute art style, and genuine strategy. By viewing the KPIs, players can get an early look at which employees to prioritize this quarter, but relying on any one worker too much will result in burnout.

The final vibe-coded game

The whole project took me about an hour of actual prompting, spread across an evening and a morning.

Your game will likely be very different from mine (check it out here) and that’s the point. The best vibe coding projects are the ones that could only come from you—your weird interests, your specific vision. Treat the AI as a true collaborator, and you can build some pretty cool stuff.

That’s why we recommend you don’t start with a business plan or productivity app. Start with the game you never knew you always wanted to play. And of course, the whole point of this exercise is to help you learn a powerful new productivity skill. From there, after you’re comfortable vibe coding, you might start using it to build your own agents that can automate tedious aspects of your work, or even design a brilliant software-as-a-service product. The only limit is your imagination.