Introduction
I’m not an indie developer or a professional game designer. I’m just a beginner — someone who had a weird but exciting game idea and wanted to try building it from scratch.
With no real background in game development, I turned to Amazon Q, an AI coding assistant, and Pygame, a simple Python library for games. The result? A spooky, mysterious game idea called:
"Echoes of the Forgotten: The Loop"
In this post, I’ll share:
- The game concept I came up with
- The prompt I gave Amazon Q
- How I used AI to build my first game mechanics
- What I learned along the way
The Game Idea: "Echoes of the Forgotten"
The idea hit me:
What if you play as a blind character, trapped in a strange place, with no way to see the world — except by making noise?
In the game, you play as Elara, a blind girl stuck in an endless, haunted orphanage. You can’t see anything — the screen is black — until you press the spacebar, which creates a sound pulse that lights up the world for just a moment.
But there's a catch:
Making noise also attracts The Warden, a scary creature that hunts sound.
Your goal is to explore, survive, and find hidden memory fragments that reveal Elara’s past and the dark truth of the orphanage.
The Prompt I Used with Amazon Q
Since I was new to coding games, I asked Amazon Q to help by giving it this detailed prompt:
Prompt I Gave Amazon Q:
I want to create a 2D endless psychological horror puzzle game using Pygame, titled "Echoes of the Forgotten: The Loop". The player is blind and must navigate a procedurally generated environment using sound pulses (activated with the spacebar) that simulate echolocation — briefly revealing nearby walls and objects in a radial ripple. The player must collect memory fragments scattered throughout an infinite, ever-shifting orphanage while avoiding a sound-sensitive enemy called The Warden who hunts based on noise.
Features I asked Amazon Q to generate:
Endless rooms or exploration
Sound-based navigation system
Basic memory collection
Enemy that hears and chases sound
Simple placeholders (like circles and rectangles).
What Amazon Q Helped Me Build
Amazon Q helped me generate:
- A working game loop in Pygame
- A player character that sends out ripples of sound
- A chasing enemy that listens for those ripples
- A way to create rooms and hide memory fragments
It even split the code into helpful files like main.py, player.py, and enemy.py — making it easier for me to read and understand.
What Makes the Game Different
Even as a beginner, I wanted my game to be more than just "fun" — I wanted it to feel mysterious and emotional.
Key mechanics and features:
- You can’t see — only "hear" your way through
- Rooms are endless, so it feels like a never-ending maze
- Memories tell a story bit by bit
- The enemy learns over time, and things start to feel strange or wrong
What I Learned
This project taught me:
- That you don’t need to be an expert to start game dev
- How to use Pygame for simple 2D graphics
- How to ask better questions to AI tools like Amazon Q
- How powerful even basic mechanics can feel when combined with a strong idea
Most of all, it showed me how fun it is to build something unique from scratch — even if it's small, even if it's not perfect.
What’s Next
Now that the core mechanics are working, I’m planning to:
- Add more types of rooms and puzzles
- Make the enemy smarter and scarier
- Introduce a “madness” effect that changes gameplay over time
- Let players collect all 10 memories and maybe… escape the loop?
Watch the Game in Action
Github Repository
Echoes of the Forgotten
A 2D psychological horror puzzle game built with Pygame, centered around sound-based navigation (echolocation) and a layered mystery-horror narrative.
Game Concept
You play as Elara, a blind girl who wakes up in a decrepit orphanage with no memory of how she got there. Using sound to navigate the pitch-black world, you must solve puzzles, avoid "The Warden," and collect memory fragments to uncover the truth about your past.
Core Mechanics
Echolocation Navigation
- The screen is mostly black
- Emit sound (spacebar) to reveal the environment momentarily through radial ripples
- Different surfaces return different echo patterns (metal, wood, flesh, stone)
Sound-Based Puzzles
- Reproduce rhythms
- Identify sound directions
- Solve voice-based riddles
- Interpret reversed audio clues
The Warden (AI Enemy)
- Invisible ghost-like enemy that reacts to sound
- Must strategically distract it by making noise elsewhere
- Different states: patrolling, investigating, hunting
Memory Fragments
- Scattered throughout the orphanage
- Reveal partial flashbacks in…
Final Thoughts
If you’re a beginner like me, and you’ve got a weird game idea stuck in your head — go for it.
Use tools like Amazon Q, and Pygame to experiment and learn. You’ll be surprised by what you can build, even with zero experience.
"Echoes of the Forgotten: The Loop" started as just a thought…
Now it’s becoming a real game — and that’s honestly kind of awesome.
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