The Ultimate Guide to Developing AI Games 2025

AI-powered tools like Cursor are revolutionizing how developers create interactive experiences, such as video games. With using AI to help create games trending, we've put together some of the best tips to help you get started. Learn the best ways to developing game using AI assistance.

Getting Started: Choosing your game

Before you even begin to write any code, you need to decide what type of game you want to build. There's lost of ways for getting inspiration, here are a few ideas.

The Copycat Approach

Consider creating a new version of an already-popular game. It may be a newer game that you enjoyed playing or it could be a choice from older classic retro arcade games. There's a wide-range of games to choose from.

This approach is particularly recommended for beginners as it deals with all the rules and logic - you have a working base idea that is already proven. But don't let that put you off as there's still a lot of freedom to tweak things, add your own ideas and make something unique too.

Board Game Adaptations

In a similar fashion you may look to games that you have played outside of the digital world. Board games are a great example, you can browse through the best board games of all time. But you also are not limited to just board games. Consider games that might be played at school, on a playground - all these games have established rules that can be expanded on.

Educational Games

Education is a large space and an often overlooked sector. Whether you design something aimed directly at schools or students there are lots of subjects and topics that could be transformed into a game for educational purposes.

This approach not only offers a unique value proposition, but also making something more engaging than standard educational material is relatively straightforward.

Ask AI

Still stuck? Why not ask AI? You might share some ideas that you have, tell it some games you like, or asking for the most popular games at any given time. AI may be able to help you draw more inspiration and offer a wider-range of knowledge which might help you come up with a great idea to pursue.

Getting Started: Project Management

Planning The Project

Whether you use Grok AI, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or something else... the choice is up to you. At this stage there is still no code yet, rather it's time to plan out the project.

Of course you are welcome to write it out yourself, but for many this may feel like a boring part of the process. But it's important to understand that a well-defined project can help keep both you and AI on-track.

The documents to consider are:

A detailed Product Requirements Document (PRD)
Tech stack specifications
Coding guidelines for front-end and back-end development

If unsure about what these documents might include, how to write them and what the standards are you can check out articles such as how to write a PRD and even utilize AI to to help explain and give examples.

Leverage Project Rules

Utilize the documents from the planning stage as custom project instructions. These are crucial in guiding AI behavior across your entire codebase. If you find that AI is making changes that don't match with your expectation than go back and refine the docs. You may want to consider:

Establishing naming conventions
Protecting critical files from unintended modifications
Maintaining consistent coding standards

Generate Multiple Versions

Don't settle for the first iteration. Sometimes what you requested didn't quite happen or AI went and did something else. You may want to undo the changes and go back to edit your prompt.

This is particularly useful when starting with your first prompt. You can try generating multiple initial versions of your game, then carefully select and refine the most promising concept. This approach increases your chances of creating a standout game.

Get Coding and Play

Setup Your Development Environment

Setting up your developer environment can be quite a lengthy process and rather technical. To make things easier you can go ahead and deploy a DevBox with a fully-configured environment ready-to-go.

For a lightweight framework to work with 2D games you might try Vue.js - you can 1-click deploy Vue.js with DevBox.

Setup Your IDE and Code

With DevBox you can 1-click open your development environment in your favorite IDE. Once in your favorite IDE with the project open the first step is to add the documents that outline the project, whether that is the PRD itself or additional rules.

These files can go in a folder such as docs were you can keep them for your own reference and AI. To make them easily read by human and AI it's recommended to use Markdown for these files. They should be well structured, with clear sections and use of bullet points for criteria.

Once you are all setup with your criteria it's time to get coding. You can directly utilize the AI in your IDE but might also benefit from using an external AI first to refine the prompt before feeding it into your code editor.

Test and Release

As necessary you should make sure to test your code as your progress with AI, ensuring that the code is doing what you want it to do and that other things aren't being replaced or broken.

When you project is ready you can release your app. If using DevBox you can go quickly and easily release your app and then deploy your app. Once released you can try it out and making sure everything is working as intended.

Once your project is online it's now time to play it. You might want to go back and change some things at this point but don't let that stop you from sharing your creation. After all games are meant to be shared and played.

You might directly share with family, friends, colleagues and classmates. Utilize your social media and post about what you have created. Don't forget to give us a mention, we'd love to see what you have created.

Final Thoughts

Developing games with AI assistance is an exciting, rapidly evolving field. By combining technical skills, creative thinking, and strategic use of AI tools like Cursor, developers can create unique, engaging gaming experiences faster than ever before.

Remember, the key is not just to use AI as a coding assistant, but to integrate AI thinking into every stage of your game development process.

Happy coding, and may your games be both innovative and fun!