This post originally appeared on the Makko AI blog.
Over 100 unique card assets. 7 days. Under $500. No dedicated artist on the team.
That is what AI game development made possible for Sector Scavengers, a roguelike salvage game I have been building using Makko. This post is a full walkthrough of the card art we created, what each card does mechanically, and how the design turns derelict salvage into a replayable roguelike experience.
It is also an honest account of what the process actually looks like: the design questions we have not answered yet, the mechanics we are not sure about, and how Makko makes it possible to test a much wider range of hypotheses with real players than traditional production methods would allow.
The game: Sector Scavengers
Sector Scavengers is set in a bleak future where tech employees wake from cryo freeze as space salvagers. Each salvage run is a tight 10-round tactical session. You draft three tactic cards per round, spend energy to play them, and manage risk against reward while your hull creaks and your shields drain.
The card art brings each decision to life. Every Scavenge, Repair, Extract, and danger card has its own illustrated identity, and the mechanics behind them turn simple choices into genuine tension.
What Makko built in 7 days
In the past week, Makko and I created over 100 unique card assets for our playtesters. These split into two types: unique cards with different gameplay impact, and art variants for those unique cards. Both are unlockable through gameplay.
The speed matters here. Not just because faster is cheaper, but because speed changes what you can test. When generating a new card variant takes minutes rather than days, you can put more mechanical hypotheses in front of real players and let the data answer questions that would otherwise stay theoretical.
Core cards: the foundation of every run
Every run starts with three core cards: Scavenge for loot, Repair to keep the ship alive, Extract to exit with your gains.
Scavenge: risk hull breach for rewards
Scavenge is the base risk and reward card. There is a 30% chance of valuable salvage, 20% chance of nothing, and a 50% chance of entering a danger zone where breach chance scales by round. Higher ship class means better loot and higher breach chance.
The variants behind Scavenge are where the real design questions live. Do players enjoy risking everything for Legendary loot? Or do they prefer double the volume of rewards? Makko makes new art trivial to generate so testing both is a playtesting question, not a production problem.
Compliance Scan and Break Room Raid — no gameplay impact, just Scavenge cards with different art. The question they test: do players care about art variants at all? Makko makes the production cost of that answer nearly zero.
Risky Scavenge — higher hull breach risk for greater rewards. For players who want to lean into the danger deliberately.
Rush Scavenge — higher breach risk for double rewards. Design question: do players prefer more rewards or better rewards? Both variants exist so playtesting can answer that directly.
Full Haul — doubles loot but triggers a hazard roll regardless of how you extract. Honest design question: is asking the player to remember they applied a debuff to their extract too much cognitive overhead? Playtesting will tell us.
Deep Scan — reveals a hidden bonus item with no breach risk and a lower energy cost of 10. Feels like it might be overpowered. Making it rare is probably necessary.
Repair: restore hull, survive the run
Repair restores 10 or more hull and reduces collapse risk by 10% per use. There is a 35% chance of hull stress that deals 25 damage, so even the sustain card can bite back.
Patch and Hold — activates a shield and applies one charge of repair.
Salvage Parts — kicks off a Scavenge loot and damage roll and applies one charge of repair. Design question: how do players use dual-use cards? Are they overpowered? Playtesting will answer that.
Extract: exit the run with your loot
Extract costs only 5 energy but the later you play it the more likely a breach becomes on your way out. The question it forces every round: extract now and bank your rewards, or scavenge one more time?
Secure Extract — guarantees a safe exit but costs 15 energy and almost always appears before round 5, costing you rounds. Tension shifts from breach risk to opportunity cost.
Quick Extract — guarantees you get out alive but you leave 30% of your loot behind.
Unlockable cards: Death Tier and Doctrine progression
Cards unlock as you play. Collapse fills the Death Tier meter. Reach thresholds and new cards enter the draft pool. Make specific card choices to advance your Doctrine path — Corporate, Cooperative, or Smuggler — and unlock more cards at 5, 10, and 15 points.
Reinforce — adds one shield up to a maximum of five. Unlocks at Death Tier 1.
Upgrade — costs 20 energy and bumps the target ship's class by 1. Higher class means better loot and reduced breach chance. A long-term payoff card.
Danger cards: forced play and roguelike tension
Danger cards are forced play. The game deals them and you must resolve them.
Hull Creaking — 40% nothing, 30% hull damage, 30% hidden salvage cache.
Power Surge — 50% nothing, 25% gain one shield, 25% hull damage.
Structural Stress — 60% nothing, 20% hull damage, 20% free repair progress.
How this creates a compelling roguelike experience
Every Scavenge is a weighted roll. Ship class and round number change the odds. You are always deciding whether to push one more round or extract now. That decision never gets easier.
Danger cards add unpredictability and create memorable moments. Shields and repair cards take on new meaning once you have been caught by a Power Surge at round 8 with no shields left.
Progression through failure keeps the loop running. Collapse fills the Death Tier meter. Fail runs still advance you toward new tools.
The intent-driven game development approach Makko uses made it possible to wire this progression system together without writing a single line of code.
What Makko made possible here
The honest answer is that this game would not exist at this stage without Makko. Not because the ideas were not there, but because the production gap between having ideas and being able to test them with real players would have been too wide to cross at this pace and this cost.
Over 100 cards in 7 days at under $500 is not a brag. It is a description of what changes when the bottleneck shifts from production to design judgment. Makko made the cost of asking those questions low enough that we could ask all of them at once.
Next week I will walk through the Void Echo and death-themed progression system — Void Communion. In Sector Scavengers, near-death experiences translate into unlockable power.
Start building free at Makko AI
For detailed walkthroughs and live demos, visit the Makko YouTube channel.
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