DOOMscrolling: The Game
22 comments
·September 10, 2025stevage
enobrev
In theory, I'm a fan of it. I think getting a working mock-up as a demonstration of an idea is far better than building something from a few napkin sketches and then iterating while we close in on the original vision.
As for my own work, I just spent a couple hours this afternoon in a back and forth discussion with claude code, asking it to mock up a UI for me before "we" start building it tomorrow. It was just a mock-up, so I didn't require precision, but I was impressed with some tidbits that came along for the ride.
Some things it did without me asking
* Mock data for the lists and pages in json format, so I could easily add records to it for different scenarios
* Working navigation between pages, including modals
* Working progress bars and timers
* Working list sorts and filters
* Toasts for functionality that was beyond the scope of the mock-up ("sending email to author of post" or "banning user")
* Not-half-bad animations and transitions between pages, screens, modals, etc
* A responsive layout that worked better than expected on mobile and desktop
* Some ideas I hadn't considered, that we then expanded upon
I would have mocked this up for a client, but not for myself. It's quite nice to have a working html / javascript / css mockup to play with while I flesh out my own ideas - with a benefit that I actually fully understand the output and can tweak it myself as needed.
giveita
Great game! I like the share button copying to clipboards ha ha.
p1necone
You may not be able to code, but the fact that you identified the need for asset editor tooling ("lab") entirely on your own, and built and used it successfully tells me you'd probably make a great engineer.
You also invented a movement control method I have never seen before - please keep making games.
mananaysiempre
> I had ChatGPT build labs with sliders that I could adjust to decide how I want things to appear, instead of getting frustrated with the chatbot.
Your very own Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set[1].
(It is of course very common to do all sorts of game art using ad hoc parametric stuff like this, I just find the similarity amusing.)
[1] https://www.folklore.org/Calculator_Construction_Set.html
ironicsans
This 100% occurred to me as I did it. I may not be a coder but I did read the Steve Jobs biography.
masswerk
Proof for there being still some pretty simple ideas to be explored. – Well done.
Dilettante_
Would love an option to adjust the "mouse sensitivity", and flicking(is that the right term? I mean that the momentum from scrolling continues even if you lift your finger from the screen). Right now movement feels a mite heavy, I'm scrolling like three times as much as I'd find comfortable.
Aside from that, this might become my new favorite time waster of the week.
galuggus
I used ai to make a simple game for a hackathon:
you are an ai gathering training data
its a bit like warioware with an extremly annoying soundtrack
came 2nd! thanks claude
bobmcnamara
This is awesome!
Finally camped by the health and was rewarded with...one health.
Kept hoping the +spread would shoot closer to down.
forbiddenvoid
Really nice. Cool mechanic. I wish it was a little bit harder, though. At 2000m, I just sort of got bored, because the weapon was so powered up that all of the enemies died instantly.
keyle
Clever idea, this is why indie games are so fantastic. They explore ideas that no studio would touch, until...
cubefox
Kind of concerning what a non- programmer can do with vibe coding... On the other hand, it's somewhat reassuring that the game is clearly missing scroll inertia/momentum. I guess he didn't yet get the language model to do it for him.
felineflock
Am I the only one who finds in bad taste to use "Epstein victims demand release ..." in the game? Is rape and pedophilia already normalized and I didn't notice?
mitkebes
It pulls news headlines via RSS feed, so the developer didn't intentionally put that headline in the game.
p1necone
The game is just pulling news headlines - specific text isn't being intentionally included.
tylervigen
It’s a live RSS feed of New York Times articles.
It is absolutely wild seeing people who do not know how to code building and shipping computer games.
This kind of language is fascinating/terrifying:
> I assume doing all this computationally is more processor-intensive than using pre-rendered monsters, but it’s very smooth for me on both desktop and phone, so it must not be too intensive. I guess I’ll hear from people if it’s choppy on their device.
I think the nature of our profession as coders is in process of shifting very rapidly, from "write code to do something useful" to "write code to do something useful, better than I could vibe code myself".
Feels like the painful transition when professional photographers started having to differentiate themselves from whatever people could do with their own phone.
On the other hand, as someone who can code in certain domains (web, maps), I could definitely see myself vibe coding as a way to quickly create something in a domain where I have no expertise (eg, Unity).