How did you spend your Saturday?
Following up on those weekend vibe-coding sessions where AI turns prototyping into actual fun (indie game MVPs at warp speed)...
I randomly thought about a super simple ship battle game, tiny pirate ships, one cannon each. Nothing AAA, just basic fun. (There was some old game like this that got buried on IGDB, but whatever.)
Challenge: how fast can I actually get this playable?
Started at 1:21 PM with a Lovable prompt.
By 8:45 pm I was texting my wife: "Done + "
Total ~7 hours, including a 2-hour shopping trip + dinner break.
Journey went like this:
Frontend & basics (~2 hours)
Used Lovable because credits were there, not married to it over Claude or anything, just whatever gets the job done fast. (People ask why not X tool; honestly doesn't matter as long as you ship.)
In ~2 hours: proper ship maneuvers, shooting, game menu, health bars, the works. All browser-based. Synced to GitHub.
Backend & multiplayer magic (the painful but rewarding part)
Pulled locally, opened in Cursor.
Asked it to plan an authoritative server: matchmaking queues, bot fills, WS everything. One requirement: RUST.
It went... ambitious. Generated Rust backend (very necessary for my tiny $6 DO droplet, low resources, fast, safe).
Struggles were real:
- Stutter movements, flickering env
- WS connectivity flakes
- Message contracts all over the place
- FIFO queue ordering headaches
Had to jump in a few times, mostly because I know where these things usually blow up (frontend fighting backend state updates = constant re-renders). Tweaked to make backend single source of truth, frontend just renders/interpolates. Way smoother now.
Deployment (reusing my template)
Techy spoiler, skip if you don't care
$6 DigitalOcean droplet + free Cloudflare Pages, classic combo.
Frontend: test+lint → build → Cloudflare deploy
Backend (Rust):
- cargo test + clippy + audit + fmt
- build release
- rsync to droplet
- update systemd unit
- nginx config tweaks
- pull fresh certs for API
- healthcheck
One command, live.
End result
9-player browser lobby, 60 fps, ships sailing, cannons booming, health dropping, syncs across without major drama.
All in one Saturday.
This isn't really about showing off the game (but if you're curious for research or just want to play around, here's the live link: https://sea-mayhem.icegaming.org/ ).
Disclaimer: prototype, expect bugs, desktop only!
It's about how these weekend experiments keep getting faster and more rewarding with AI tools. Prototyping used to drag; now it's pure fun and you actually finish things.
What about you guys? Built anything silly-fun with AI on a weekend lately? How quick are your MVPs getting these days? Drop stories below, always love hearing them. 🏴☠️
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