Source note: Local copy of a Summer Into AI 2026 submission originally published on Substack. Screenshots, video, and audio found in the post body are mirrored locally when publicly accessible; profile and avatar images are intentionally not copied. Read the canonical post.
I made a bird game for the Summer into AI: Theme I challenge.
More specifically, I made a game where you build an eagle nest, play little mini-games to collect stuff to improve your nest, and then better eagles show up because your nest is cooler.
About SKY KING
The basic loop is:
>>play mini-games
>>get stuff
>>upgrade nest
>>better bird moves in
>>wonder what the next bird is
That’s pretty much it.
The important part is the “wonder what the next bird is” part.
The game is intentionally tuned to be easy to finish. For the challenge, I wanted players to see the full progression and reach the ending, so the resource requirements are very forgiving. In a longer version, the difficulty could be adjusted almost entirely through the grind system.
So the mini-games needed to be fun, fast, and simple. They’re resource generators. That’s their job.
The bird arrivals are the reward.
The bird list is:
Red-tailed Hawk
Bald Eagle
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SKY KING
What, you thought you’d get to know what all the birds were without doing the work? Ha. You thought wrong.
The player will only see the bird log entries they’ve already unlocked. I didn’t want a full progression chart. I didn’t want silhouettes of everything. I wanted the player to keep thinking, “Wait, what else can show up?”
The final entry is visible, but locked.
THE SKY KING
No nest has ever been deemed worthy.
That’s about it.
The player should assume it’s the biggest eagle. The final eagle. The most eagle an eagle can be.
The design for the final bird appeared during a late-night discussion with ChatGPT, when enthusiasm was running unusually high.
I kept it.
So now the ending is basically:
finish the nest
sky gets weird
really cool music plays
…..
Sky King reveal
(*audio is essential for maximum Sky King reveal coolness)
And that’s the game.
ABOUT THE PROCESS
I used ChatGPT to talk through the requirements and build a v0 prompt to generate the game. That prompt got me 95% of the way there. The largest chunk of time was spent on audio - picking the right sound effects and addressing issues with audio causing graphic asset load lag. That and generating (and re-generating) the bird sprites until they had the feel I wanted. Audio (music) was generated in Suno. Game sound effects were found on OpenGameArt (shiru8bit, Little Robot Sound Factory). All game art was generated by either v0 or ChatGPT.
It’s playable on desktop or mobile, but desktop is the superior experience; the task of tweaking for mobile layout and a variety of orientations is usually a time-consuming chunk of work that I didn’t want to do this time. Mobile optimization sounds like a good goal for my week 2 project - I’m curious to see how good my AI workflow is at solving that very annoying problem.
Here’s the most interesting thing I learned. I’ve used this trick on other projects, but this was the first time it gelled for me as a strategy.
Change the ask from “What could I do?” to “What’s the minimum I need to do to achieve the result I want?”
When I was adding audio to the Sky King game, my first question was literally: “Hey chat, where should I put sound?” The answer was a huge list—like 30-40 different opportunities for music, ambient audio, and sound effects. While technically correct, it created a lot of work and complexity.
The better question was: “What is the minimum amount of sound needed for the game to feel complete, polished, and engaging?”
That completely changed the answer.
Instead of dozens of sounds, chat recommended:
A click sound for navigation
A resource collection sound
A mini-game completion sound
A nest upgrade sound
A new bird arrival sound
Maybe a looping background track
I decided to also include distinct tracks for the main screens and an epic track for the final reveal.
By focusing on the minimum effective implementation, the audio plan shrank dramatically while still delivering the feeling of a finished, satisfying game.
This principle applies far beyond game development. AI is often excellent at generating comprehensive lists of possibilities, but those lists can create unnecessary work. A powerful follow-up question is:
“What is the smallest set of things I can do that will still make this feel complete?”
The goal is not to find every possible improvement. The goal is to identify the handful of elements that create most of the impact.
HOPPING BACK TO THE GAME EXPLANATION
I’m trying very hard not to add seventeen more systems to it, because this is supposed to be doable in a week. I gave myself an ever shorter time limit - a 24 hour timer, 1 single day - from idea to submission.
The gameplay target is 15–20 minutes for a normal playthrough, which means the game moves pretty quickly. New bird every few minutes. No drawn out grinding. No complicated crafting tree. No bird happiness meter. No avian city-builder complexity. (If your “AI generated prose” meter isn’t flagging right now, it should be.)
Just a nest, some fast li’l mini-games, and the question:
what shows up next?
This was a fun project to work on. I hope you enjoy playing through it!
Oh, and one other thing. To meet the “America 250” theme requirement, all of the birds are pretending to be bald eagles. They’re trying so, so hard.
Go play SKY KING now!
Eric
Original source
Canonical Substack URL: https://xblueundertow.substack.com/p/sky-king-a-summer-into-ai-theme-1.