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Developer vs. Dev Gods: A game about making a game

Developer vs. Dev Gods: A game about making a game

In this game you are a developer trying to create a game, but you must battle and defeat the dev monsters before you can emerge victorious.

Published Jan 15, 2025
Last Modified Jan 17, 2025
I spent so long trying to come up with an idea for the AWS Game Builder challenge, and for the life of me I couldn't come up with anything I liked. So one day I thought, why not make a game about making a game?! And so that's how it came to be: this game is all about struggling with the Dev Gods while trying to create a game. It may or may not represent my own struggles.. and yours maybe :)

Game Concept & Mechanics

In this game, you are a developer trying to create a game (yup, very meta). You battle with a series of "Dev Monsters" that represent the various struggles you face as you try to get this game created and submitted for the AWS Game Builder Challenge.
The battling mechanic is implemented as a dice game, where each die has various faces such as Attack, Shield and Heal. As the player, you will try to get the best rolls to defeat these monsters sent by the Dev Gods. As you level up, you are rewarded with dice upgrades and more dice to make your rolls more powerful.
Screenshot showing game dialogue
Screenshot showing game dialogue

AWS Services Used & Development Journey

Once I had come up with the concept, I used Amazon Q for some of the brainstorming. I asked it for ideas on the kinds of quirky references or challenges a programmer might face. In addition, I used Amazon Q and Amazon Q Developer to help develop parts of the code for the game. I Installed the extension in VS Code and started playing around with it. Using the /dev command, you can describe features to Amazon Q Developer and it will attempt to implement them for you. Since it's integrated with the IDE it's able to make changes to your code directly which was really handy.
When needing to implement more complex features, I found it easier to first break down the tasks into smaller subtasks. This allowed me to be more direct and clear when asking Amazon Q to implement something.
For example, I first asked it to implement the functionality for a monster with some properties such as health, name, etc. Once that functionality was working, I asked it to refactor it as an object with properties to allow the possibility of creating more monsters later. Then once that was in place I could ask it to actually implement a second monster.
I went through a similar process for adding on a second dice. One of the things I liked about Amazon Q Developer is that it explains its thought process in detail with a preview of any source code changes. That way you are able to check the code first and decide whether you want to ask Amazon Q for further modifications before accepting the changes.
For deployment I used AWS Amplify which was a quick and easy process.
Amazon Q Developer Response Example
Amazon Q Developer Response Example

Try out the game!

If you'd like to try it out, I'll leave the link below. Let me know what you think!
Have fun and may the Dev Gods be in your favor!

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