
I Built Shadow Tag, A Chase Game using Amazon Q CLI
Shadow Tag is where you control a shrinking light orb chasing shadow creatures that run away but slow down near your light. Here’s how I built it.
Published May 28, 2025
Made a game that is fun to play using Amazon Q CLI, Amazon’s AI coding assistant specifically for developers. As a result, Shadow Tag was created — a quick yet hard-to-put-down game where you control a glowing ball looking for shadows before your light dies.
It didn’t take long to get Amazon Q CLI running. I implemented Ricardo Sueiras’ guide, installed Pygame and was all set to program in my terminal.
I began the project by designing the player orb, so it could be controlled with movement and so that its light radius gradually shrank. Q CLI was able to create clean and usable code for me as soon as I asked for the orb’s logic.
I then had it create several random shadow monsters that shirk from the glowing orb. For more action, the shadows had to move closer to the light and either wink or grow or shrink.
Shadows moving abruptly was the first weakness I discovered, so I changed their movement with easing and velocity damping to make it more natural.
Working in the timer, new sounds for positive tagging and the start/win/game over panels was simple. I kept working on the prompts to make the game’s experience and look more polished.
I picked Pygame because it’s easy for beginners, runs fast and is suitable for fast games made in Python. The integration happened without any issues with the Q code my CLI generated.
Shadow Tag is played on one screen and because your light slowly disappears, you must act quickly and accurately. You beat the game by tagging shadows as the timer and the light comes closer together. Animated shadows, fun sound effects and easy to use mechanics are all part of the game.
- Amazon Q CLI allows developers to create organized code quickly by answering a few prompts.
- Repeating the prompt building process helps mold the game and find and solve problems.
- By using AI, combined with Pygame, you can create finished games with maximum speed.
- Adjusting physics, animation smoothing and the game’s audio were key tasks needed to make the game something better than basic.
I’m working on adding more levels, power-ups, more intelligent shadows and a multiplayer feature. I’m also looking to publish the game online so anyone can access it easily.
If you’re interested in working with AI in game development, you can try the Amazon Q CLI. With Glide, you can easily build games, apps or tools with very few obstacles.
Look at the full Shadow Tag code in my GitHub at: https://github.com/shineeeeeeeeeeee/shadow-tag.git