Clevergy Game is live on the web: visit clevergy-game.pages.dev to explore the worlds, team characters, and enemies in real time.
How the Idea Came About
It was tough to top last year's retreat gift. I was eating pizza with Manu and we started brainstorming what we could do next. That's where the idea struck.
Eating pizza with Manu when the idea came up
Where Do We Start?
How do you make a video game? HTML, CSS?
Well, I asked Fable, and it generated the entire game in a single HTML file. I told it to create a Mario Bros clone featuring the different members of the team, describing a bit how their powers should work.
First functional prototype built in a single HTML file
First impression: WOW. Truly.
But I felt it lacked soul. Anyone could have prompted something similar, but it didn't feel uniquely Clevergy.
I asked the AI and it told me I needed to generate sprite sheets and movement frames for each character.
First playable prototype with character motion
Design of all 18 retreat heroes, skills, and worlds
Then came playtesting, and it fell short. I asked for multiple levels and a storyline, but it was still very repetitive. I wasn't loving it.
The Angry Birds Detour
I told it: wipe everything except the first world and build me a second world inspired by Angry Birds.
Then I immediately regretted it... even though I had already generated my custom character image.
My Angry Bird version
How the discarded prototype worked
Angry Birds scrapped. What do I do now?
Honestly, my motivation dipped a bit.
The Turning Point: Claude Opus 5.5 and Inspiration
Until I realized there was only a month left, and I saw all the wild things people were creating with Claude Opus 5.5. I started drawing inspiration from other games, like Doodle Shooter.
Games built with Claude Opus 5.5
Inspiration: Doodle Shooter
That's when everything came together. I had around 70% of the game ready and it was amazing.
It just needed creative polish: as I watched it, new ideas kept popping up. No spoilers here, you'll have to play to discover them.
After several prompts, the game was almost ready. What was missing?
The Physical Side
This is where I designed and ordered the physical items. I believe gifts have 3 phases, just like travel:
- When they are planned.
- When they are received: How would I give the game out? Just say "here's the URL"?
- When they are remembered: How would it be remembered over time?
The answer? You can now open the envelopes in front of you.
Custom physical member cards in action
The Final Weekend and the Integration World
With only one weekend left, I thought: why not just play?
I took the opportunity to build something my mind had to get out: the Integration World, which you can now explore in-game.
Making It Engaging: Multiplayer and Cloudflare MCP
How do I make it truly engaging? By getting people to compete with each other (that's why Playus is so addictive).
So I built a leaderboard and asked Cloudflare MCP to spin up a database to track stats and enable multiplayer.
Spoiler: it didn't work. And no matter how many fixes I asked for, it kept breaking.
So I asked: is there any native way to handle this with Cloudflare? Since it had set up the database so quickly and cleanly, I figured they must have a service for this. And sure enough: TURN real-time.
Key Takeaways
And that's how the project wrapped up, learning and having fun once again:
- How a video game works under the hood.
- How to build cooperative multiplayer.
- How Cloudflare lets you do it all: running a database that updates tables and handles real-time sync by reading your code directly.
A Final Thought
I remember something my literature teacher once said:
«Everything has already been invented. Everything revolves around the same core ideas.»
I replied: «What about the movie Avatar?»
He smiled: «That's just cowboys and Indians, but blue.»
Inventing something completely revolutionary is hard. Striking gold with something never done before is almost impossible.
But you can always transform and remix existing ideas. There is always room to innovate, tell stories differently, and above all, surprise people.
Who will be the savior of the retreat?
🎮 Play now at clevergy-game.pages.dev.
Clevergy Game presentation and gameplay showcase
