Hey HN!

Over Christmas break, I built GLITCH - a first-person survival shooter where you play as a "glitch" fighting debugging agents in a neon-lit spherical arena.

The stack:

React Three Fiber for 3D rendering Zustand for state management PostgreSQL for the global leaderboard Hosted on Replit

What I built in ~40 prompt iterations:

- Full 6-DOF movement (fly in any direction)

- 4 enemy types with unique AI behaviors (rushers, floaters, brutes, glitchers that teleport and drop mines). If it's interesting, I have plans to expand.

- Shield ability with knockback physics - Wave-based progression system - Global leaderboard with nickname entry for top 10 scores - Prodigy-style electronic soundtrack with random track rotation - Visual effects: chromatic aberration on damage, scanlines, vignette

Interesting challenges we solved with AI assistance:

- Elastic boundary system to prevent players getting stuck at arena edges

- 3-meter knockback limit so enemies get pushed back but resume chasing

- Mine cleanup system with proper TTL handling

- The entire game loop - from concept to playable with leaderboards - was built conversationally with an AI coding assistant. Each prompt built on the last, iterating on mechanics until they felt right.

I actually wanted to build something I like to play instead of "consuming" others' games.