The Wizard's Tower and the Bramblekins

The AI tools behind it

What each tool did, in the developer's words.

OC

OpenAI CodexCoding assistants

Wrote all the game code and did the implementation in Godot. The loop was conversational: describe an idea, have Codex implement it, play the result, then explain what to change. Glynn looked at the code a couple of times and decided it made most sense to leave it alone.

ChatGPTConcept art & 2D assets

Generated the original images that became the 3D objects, and helped write the prompt for the music generator.

Meshy3D model generation

Turned the ChatGPT images into 3D objects. Glynn downloaded the models into a folder and asked Codex to find and use them in the game; no manual modelling, just generating, selecting and judging how they looked in the game.

M

musicgeneratorai.comMusic & SFX

Made the music from a prompt ChatGPT helped write. About ten tracks generated, roughly six favourites used.

How it was made

I've been coding for decades, but this game was entirely vibe coded: Codex wrote all the game code. I directed the ideas, played the results and decided what worked.

I was keen to complete it within a week, partly because that seemed impossible to me. The game was mostly completed in five days. My slightly tongue-in-cheek description is “90% in one day, 99% in four days, and 99.9% in a hundred days if you kept going.”

My instructions often mixed observations, possible causes, exceptions and requests for dialogue in one message. I was impressed by how well Codex picked out the information from fairly rambling instructions.

Being able to add something quickly didn't automatically make it worth keeping. Trying ideas and dropping the ones that didn't work was part of shaping the game. It eventually grew to include a larger second adventure rebuilding four towers, plus three bonus Bramblekin adventures.

Start to finish: a flat painting in a 3D frame, from Meshy surprise to the tower wall

One thing Glynn (FarflameX) made with AI, step by step, in their words.

1. Pictures of framed paintings sent through Meshy came back with the contents made three-dimensional too: a dragon poked out of its frame. The first three paintings are still like that, because they look funny.
2. For a later painting, Glynn supplied a frame model (pictureframe.glb) and a separate flat image (3wizards.png) in the usual assets folder.
3. He asked Codex: “Can you take that 3d picture frame then sort of 'paint' the painting into the plain gap so it's a flat painting... in 3d? If you follow. Don't stretch the picture though, cut it if necessary, you're free to use paint.net or whatever else needed.”
4. The same prompt said where it goes: on the wall of act 2's home tower, flying into place when picked up like the other large objects. It worked first time.

Where AI fell short

• Meshy made painting contents 3D (the dragon out of the frame), so for later paintings the workflow changed to a separate frame model plus a flat image that Codex combined.
• The apprentice's dress kept getting stuck after going in and out of the pond. Glynn's guess at the cause was wrong; Codex investigated, found a different underlying issue and fixed it.
• Otherwise, in his words: “I can't honestly identify a major area where AI fell short of my expectations.” Codex cut the floorboards into smooth edges around a circular tower and curved the bannisters, both first time.

Tips from the developer

• Being able to add something quickly doesn't make it worth keeping. Try ideas and drop the ones that don't work.
• Put one change in one message with its exceptions: “making everything except bricks and floorboards insta-fly into place ... for act 2 only (not act 1)” worked as requested, dialogue included.

Screenshots