This is a submission for the GitHub Finish-Up-A-Thon Challenge
What I Built
For everyone who does not know Firebase Studio: Firebase Studio is a fully web-based workspace for full-stack app development, with generative AI powered by Gemini, full app previews, and cloud emulators.
For me, Firebase Studio was honestly a game changer as a vibe coding tool. One of the biggest reasons was that I could work with a huge amount of AI assistance without constantly being stopped by token limits. Also, the connection to Firebase itself was incredibly smooth. Storage, database, authentication — everything felt very easy to connect and prototype with.
Because of that, I used Firebase Studio a lot for vibe coding and fast prototyping.
One project that was especially fun for me was AETHER: The Fifth Element.
AETHER is an online fantasy trading card game inspired by games like Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon TCG, and Riftbound. The first spark actually came from Riftbound and from my brothers. During my last visit back home, they showed me the new card game and were really excited about it. That excitement gave me the idea to build my own fantasy card game.
In the older project files you can still see the old working title: Core-Rift Nexus.
But pretty quickly, the project started to move in its own direction. I created my own rules, my own mechanics, and my own world.
One of the core mechanics is that there is only one main energy source: Aether.
The Aether pool refreshes every round. Players can play up to five Aether resources, and the pool can grow up to ten. These resources are used to play units, spells, relics, and trap cards.
Every card has its own effect, but listing all of them here would be way too much. You can explore the full card set directly in the demo.
Demo
You can try the game here:
https://aether-tcg-cyan.vercel.app/
Please note that this version is an open playtest. The game is still in development, and all accounts, collections, decks, progress, currencies, marketplace data, and save states may be reset or deleted before an official release.
So if you create your own account and play the demo, please do not treat your progress as permanent. This version is mainly meant for testing, feedback, and showing the current state of the project.
I also created a demo account with a lot of Merits and Gold, so you can open some boosters and test the progression.
Because honestly: what would a TCG be without booster packs and rare cards?
Demo login:
Email: dev@test.com
Password: Aeth3r2026
The Comeback Story
I decided to finish this project because Firebase Studio is going to be sunset in the future.
Technically, I could move on to Google AI Studio or Google Antigravity, but for this project I wanted something different: I wanted to rescue the project and continue building it locally as a normal Next.js app.
I had started the game roughly half a year ago, but because of limited time, I was not able to continue working on it.
A lot of the core game logic already existed in the beginning. But I have to be honest: this project was mostly vibe coded. I followed the creative flow, tested ideas quickly, and let the project evolve while building.
The foundation was there, but the game was not really playable yet.
It also did not have its own proper graphics. At the beginning, I used placeholder images dynamically from the League of Legends database. That was fine for prototyping, but it was not the identity I wanted for AETHER.
Later, I generated my own card graphics and also animated some of them with Meta AI. I wanted the whole experience to feel more interactive, not just like static images on a board. For example, when you play certain cards, short animations can appear. There is also an animation mode that can be turned off.
So the game received a full makeover.
It now has:
- a working tutorial with the project’s own little mascot, the Aether Spirit
- online PvP mode
- campaign missions
- a marketplace where players can sell cards
- booster sets with opening and reveal animations
- different rarities
- different card designs
- a much more polished UI
- real assets instead of placeholder images
- multi language
- loading aniamtions
This screenshot shows the difference between the beginning and the current version pretty well:
You can also find the old and new repositories here:
Old repo: https://github.com/southy404/aether-card-game
New repo: https://github.com/southy404/aether-tcg
My Experience with GitHub Copilot
I had used GitHub Copilot before, but working on this project reminded me again how strong it can be when it comes to understanding code context.
And context was one of the biggest weaknesses I had with Firebase Studio.
The bigger the project became, the more difficult it was for Gemini inside Firebase Studio to keep everything together. It often lost track of parts of the project or created bugs because the full structure and the connected game logic were hard to understand.
To be fair, I did not use only one AI tool for the final version. I used several coding tools, including Claude Code and Codex. I also often had a ChatGPT conversation open where I could think through ideas, mechanics, structure, and implementation plans.
But GitHub Copilot was still a real game changer in the process.
Copilot helped me find bugs more precisely, understand broken parts faster, and create better implementation plans. A lot of ideas and concrete step-by-step plans came from GitHub Copilot. Sometimes I used those plans directly, and sometimes I used them as a clean structure before implementing things with another AI coding tool.
That workflow worked surprisingly well.
I am a big fan of using multiple tools for vibe coding. My brain often jumps between ideas quickly, especially with a creative project like a fantasy card game. Copilot helped me turn that idea chaos into something more structured, because it understood the code, the context, and the direction of the project.
So I would not say that Copilot built the whole game from scratch.
The original idea and the first prototype started in Firebase Studio.
But Copilot helped me rescue it, continue it, clean it up, fix bugs, and move it much closer to a real playable game.
In the end, Firebase Studio gave me the starting point.
GitHub Copilot helped me finish what I started.
What I Learned
The biggest lesson for me was that AI coding tools are not just about generating code.
They are also about momentum.
For a side project, momentum is everything. Many projects do not die because the idea is bad. They die because the project becomes too messy, too unfinished, or too hard to continue after a long break.
That is exactly where Copilot helped me.
It helped me reconnect with my old codebase, understand what was already there, fix what was broken, and continue building without feeling completely lost.
It also reminded me that vibe coding does not mean “just let AI do everything.”
For me, vibe coding is more like directing a creative process. I bring the idea, the taste, the world, the mechanics, and the decisions. The AI helps me move faster, organize the chaos, and turn the vision into something playable.
Final Thoughts
AETHER is still not perfect.
There are still things I want to improve, balance, polish, and expand. But compared to the old Firebase Studio prototype, it now feels like a real game project.
And that was the goal of this challenge for me.
Not to start something new.
But to finally finish what I started.
Top comments (0)