GUIDE

How to make a video game with AI (that actually ships)

AI will not make a great game from one prompt. It will remove most of the slow work when you use it at the right steps: drafting your design, writing and explaining code, generating background 3D assets, laying out worlds by rules, multiplying crowds and voicing side characters.

Duke Forger builds that in at every step, and its optional AI Team lets agents from the AI accounts you connect keep advancing your game day and night, with an independent reviewer and spending limits you control.

The steps

1. Step 1: Define the game in one paragraph

   Write who you play, what you do, what you want and why it is interesting. This paragraph is the compass every later decision is checked against.

2. Step 5: Write the game's rules as observable behavior

   Movement, combat, health, enemies, objectives, progression and death, each written as something you can test. This list becomes your development checklist.

3. Step 17: Build the gameplay structure

   Keep the player, the game rules, the interface and saved data in separate pieces. One giant script is how projects become impossible to fix.

4. Step 32: Connect the character to the game

   Send the character to Unreal with Auto Setup, replace the template mannequin but keep the tested controls, attach the weapon and line up hit timing with the swing.

5. Step 40: Build towns and cities from kits and rules

   Modular building kits plus rules give you variety without modeling every building. Epic's City Sample builds a 4 km city this way.

6. Step 44: Let AI agents build at your quality bar

   You give the agent your region rules, your curated assets and your references. It builds in an isolated copy of the project, checks itself against your references, and you approve or send it back.

7. Step 46: Generate variations from the seed

   ActorMixer blends up to six characters into new faces and bodies. On top of that, randomize morphs, skin, aging, makeup, dirt and outfits within your step 6 rules.

8. Step 49: Decide who speaks which language, and how

   Keep the main story hand-written. Use AI for side characters, small talk and barks, each limited to what that character should know.

9. Step 61: Run the expansion loop

   Each pass measures the gap, builds new content from your approved kits in the Sandbox, checks it automatically, shows you before and after, and merges only with your approval. It stops when every requirement is met.

Common questions