"Make Nothing" with CreateAnything.com
Game prototyping with a no-code AI development platform.
Over the weekend I spent a few hours experimenting with CreateAnything, a no-code AI platform for building web and mobile apps. I used it to make “Make Nothing”, a simple numbers game where you select values that add up to zero.
My early impressions were very positive. It produced a playable first draft within minutes, the next hour or two went smoothly and the minor bugs I hit were resolved quickly. After nudging the UI, adding start and finish screens and doing a bit of polishing, I had a version published on my site plus a React Native build running on my phone. All in less than a day.
After that I ran into some problems.
I wasted several hours (and about 15 dollars of credits*) chasing what I thought was a display bug. The AI repeatedly told me it was fixed, yet the issue kept appearing. It turned out the fault was in the preview renderer rather than the app itself.
I then asked it to generate nicer buttons. The buttons looked good but had odd beige outlines. Again I looped with the AI for a while before checking the inspector and discovering the outlines were baked into the source image rather than coming from the CSS.
And then I ran out of credits.
My take on it so far, especially from a game development perspective:
The potential is huge. Once these rough edges are resolved it could become a very powerful way to build games and prototypes.
Right now it excels at rapid idea testing before you shift to a more manual workflow with AI assistance.
It can write code but it cannot do the design thinking. I still had to spell out in detail how the game should work, how hints should behave and how progression should operate, and the progression system it can produce at the moment is fairly limited.
If you want to try “Make Nothing”, you can play it here. It is not a great game but it is, at least, a game.
You can also check out CreateAnything.com here and we will both get bonus credits if you sign up.
Links:
- https://www.kemptand.co/misc/makenothing
- https://www.createanything.com/invite/nn44egaz
* It’s also worth noting that CreateAnything.com did kindly refund my credits today.