Recently, I saw an announcement right here on dev.to about the Build Games with Amazon Q CLI challenge promoted by AWS. The idea is simple: use Amazon Q's AI to build a game, share how you did it, and if you're among the first 2,000 valid participants, you get an official Amazon Q t-shirt.
Why I Decided to Join
I had already done some tests with Amazon Q before, so when I saw this challenge, I realized it was the perfect opportunity to turn an experiment into something more fun — and still walk away with a new t-shirt in the end. In fact, I had already participated in a previous initiative and shared my experience in this article here on dev.to.
Using the Amazon Q Extension in VS Code
Instead of using just the terminal, I chose to use the official Amazon Q extension for Visual Studio Code, which makes the experience much smoother. With it, you can talk directly to the AI assistant inside the editor, request code snippets, tweak specific parts, and even get performance improvement suggestions for your game.
Everything was super fluid — I switched between the code and Q's chat directly in VS Code, making the process very productive.
The Game I Built
I went for a classic arcade-style game, with a spaceship, GitHub commits as enemies, and a retro vibe. Everything was built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, generating code with support from Amazon Q directly inside Visual Studio Code.
💡 I chose this style because it's perfect for testing movement, collision, scoring, and visual effects — and it's lightweight enough to run in any browser.
Game Features:
- Player movement using arrow keys (left and right)
- Shooting with the space bar
- "Enemies" represented by GitHub commits
- Real-time scoring
- Explosions, visual effects, and shooting sound
Final Result
The game is simple, but quite satisfying for something built almost entirely with AI support. And best of all: I learned a lot through the process without getting stuck in repetitive steps.
📺 Watch the gameplay in action:
👉 Want to try it yourself?
The game is desktop-only:
🎮 https://commits-invaders.jamesrmoro.me
Conclusion
Building a game with AI was a surprisingly fun experience. The Amazon Q extension for VS Code made a huge difference, bringing contextual suggestions directly into the editor and speeding up development.
🎮 #AmazonQCLI #BuildGamesChallenge #AmazonQDevCLI
Top comments (19)
I just launched it and it immediately told me that I had destroyed all the enemies
Hi! I checked your GitHub profile and saw that there are no contributions yet, but you're absolutely right: the message you received was incorrect. I've just updated the game to fix this behavior. Thanks a lot for pointing it out! 🙌
works well! the first time I didn't understand that I needed to enter the name from github
This is super legit - actually love seeing what folks build with these tools and now I wanna mess with Amazon Q too.
You can build a lot of cool stuff, thanks for the comment @nevodavid
Wow
interesting output. Might give Amazon Q a try later
Nice!
Love this!
@094459 thanks!
Awesome!
@hr21don thanks!
Pretty cool, I love seeing someone actually ship a full game just from messing around with a new tool
It's really cool, more things could be added like sound, difficulty levels, thanks for the comment
Really cool project, James! Loved how you used Amazon Q CLI to build a game. Super inspiring stuff!🚀🎮
Thanks for the feedback @aggarwal_gaurav_1012🚀
Very neat. This inspires me to do the same... amazon Q - stop hiding, its time to work!
How do you get to know about these challenges? whats the source
It appeared to me as an ad here in the sidebar of the dev.to website
Source: community.aws/content/2y6egGcPAGQs...