Simon Willison says vibe coding now produces fun games
He built four games with Claude Opus 5.5 and says the new challenge is coming up with novel concepts.
4 gamesVibe-coded games he genuinely enjoyed playing
The short version
- Willison calls October 2026 a new inflection point for vibe coding computer games.
- He built four browser games in HTML and JavaScript over a few weeks, without looking at the code.
- Tree Appreciator was built in a single prompt, while his fantasy RPG takes about 15 minutes to play through.
- His Command & Conquer-style game Battle Drones now has 2-4 player multiplayer, seven maps and a random map generator.
Why it matters
The article suggests the hard part of game development has shifted from making a game work to finding original ideas. For developers, it shows that current models can tune gameplay and build 3D models with little guidance. Willison believes GPT-6 Astra does not yet match Opus 5.5 on sense of fun.
“Building games that play well is shockingly easy now.”
What people are saying
Hacker News commenters were divided. One said they are not looking forward to playing vibe-coded games but agreed models are good enough for small games. Another said they built a tower defense prototype with Sol and GLM 5.3 Flash and it worked well.