The first sentence of a game project is not "build me a game". It is "this is the thing I want" — followed by the reference.
Why the reference comes first
The feeling in your head loses most of its detail on the way into words. A reference an AI can actually process does not. I opened with exactly two things.
① A link to a game in the same genre. Modern assistants can search the web, so they can go read up on that game's mechanics, controls, hooks and selling points without you paraphrasing any of it.
② A screen recording. An assistant can pull a video apart frame by frame — extract frames with FFmpeg or OpenCV, tile a few dozen of them into one contact sheet, and read the whole thing at a glance. Out of that it gets the camera, the HUD layout, the core loop, the art style, the pacing.
The method is simple enough to hand over verbatim: have it build a keyframe grid first to see the shape of the game, then zoom into a few individual frames for detail — where the gun sits on screen, what the HUD looks like. The output of this step is one thing only: a one-sentence description of the core loop, plus a list of key elements. That sentence is the anchor for every decision that follows.
The reference hierarchy
The more machine-readable it is, the better it lands: recording > screenshot > written description. If you have a link, give the link and let it search. If you have a recording, give the recording and let it extract frames. Both is best — one teaches it the mechanics, the other teaches it the presentation.
One rule for this step: alignment only, no code yet. If it starts writing an implementation now, you have skipped the part where you find out whether it understood you.
In one lineAn AI is not a wishing well. The more specific and referenceable your input, the closer the output lands.
The prompts I used
I want to build a game. Here are my references: ① Screen recording (uploaded): extract keyframes, tile them into a contact sheet to see the whole thing first, then zoom into a few frames. Summarise: core loop, camera, HUD layout, gameplay loop, art style. ② A game in the same genre: <paste link> — search the web and study its mechanics, controls and hooks. Combining both, describe in one sentence the core loop I am trying to build, and list the 5 key elements you identified. This step is alignment only — do not write any code yet.
I want to build a [genre] game. My reference recording is uploaded. Please: 1) Extract keyframes into a contact sheet, look at the whole first, then zoom in for detail; 2) Summarise the core loop, camera, HUD layout, gameplay loop and art style; 3) Give me a one-sentence core-loop description plus a list of key elements. Alignment only for now — no code.
I want to build a game similar to [link]. Search the web and study its mechanics, controls and hooks. Describe the core loop in one sentence and list the key elements I would need to reproduce. No code yet.
The game I built
This is what came out the other end of all of it. It opens in the browser, nothing to download — go and break it.
