Pixel Darts: From Pub to Glory (Steam Demo live now!)

What my game does: I spent 8 months vibe coding a 90s-arcade-style 1-on-1 darts game built with a retro arcade-fighting spirit (inspired by Street Fighter and Super Punch-Out!!). It blends fast-paced throwing mechanics with dynamic feedback (screen shakes, flashes, heavy SFX), a high-score system, and a deeply personal, autobiographical career mode featuring original dialogue, humor, and a story about loss and self-empowerment.

My Tech Stack: Phaser 3 (Engine), Claude Opus (Frontend dev), GPT-5 series (Backend dev), ElevenLabs (SFX), Suno (Music), Nano Banana Pro / GPT Image 2 + Aseprite (Pixel art generation & my manual cleanup).

My Prompting Strategy & AI Workflow

Strict Context & Documentation: To keep LLMs from hallucinatory code breaks and bug loops, I enforced a mandatory documentation rule. I created a central matrix covering gameplay mechanics, design decisions, and backend state that every AI agent had to process before touching my codebase.

Agent Networking: As token limits climbed toward the end of development, I networked specialized sub-agents together to manage discrete tasks while maintaining overall code integrity.

Challenges I Overcame

Making Simple Mechanics Stay Fun: Mouse-flick controls meant players could easily break the game or get bored. I overcame this by designing an arcade-style rivalry system and focusing heavily on "game juice" (visual flashes, screen shakes, and instant feedback) to make every throw hit with weight.

Taming "Spaghetti Code": Vibe coding smaller adjustments often caused unexpected bugs in completely unrelated systems. Setting up the strict documentation matrix for my AI assistants was essential to keeping major game-breaking bugs in check.

Cleaning Up AI Graphics: AI-generated pixel art simply wasn't usable out-of-the-box. I had to spend countless hours manually reworking and polishing the assets frame-by-frame in Aseprite to meet my visual standards.

The "1,000-Hour" Reality Check: You can't just prompt your way to a complete game. Turning a rough prototype into a polished, Steam-ready release took over 1,000 hours of my free time and ~€500 in AI tool subscriptions over 8 months.

Download Pixel Darts: From Pub to Glory Steam Demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4712560/Pixel_Darts_From_Pub_to_Glory/