Farcade

Flapcaster was my first vibe-coded game.

And today, it's the @farcade Game of the Day.

I'm beyond speechless with gratitude.

Anyway, here's about 500 words on it.

Strap in, it's a thread!

Farcade Vibe-Coder 👾 FLAPCASTER 👾

Crypto-parental-unit, hodler of bags

I had been following along with Farcade’s teasers about “creating your own games,” when they opened early access to the game studio with their first ever game jam that took place over a weekend.

I was energized and inspired in a way I’ve never really been before.

LLMs have opened so many doors that creatively I always wanted to, but felt mentally and logistically locked out of.

I feel like I can do anything now.
Which, of course, I can’t. 😅

But I’m much more willing to try things I used to talk myself out of.

Now I’m talked into trying them… by a chatbot.

And what immediately came to mind was the dumb, fun, and brutally unforgiving favorite: Flappy Bird.

Except, you know, Farcade-ified.

And I could even use the little farworld alien emoji as the bird!
Prompt: check.

All that was left was the tiny detail of hours and hours (and hours) making sure it didn’t suck.

I hand-painted (read: nudged some pixels around) my first ever sprite sheet.

I tested different gravity strengths and obstacle distances.

I learned about delta time to keep gameplay consistent across devices.

Somehow, out of ~300 entries in that first gamejam, it made it to the top 10!

Then a few nervous days later, I refreshed the game page as it ticked from 999 to 1,000 plays—the graduation requirement at the time.

(At the time of writing this, I was supposed to be waxing poetic about reaching the milestone of 10,000 unique players, spending over 400 hours across 50,000 plays…)

But today, Flapcaster was unexpectedly named Game of the Day.

So even though those numbers are probably about to go even higher, my annoyingly verbose pontification remains the same...

The phrase I first uttered to myself after those first 1K plays has taken on a meaning I never even dreamed of:

“I made a thing—and people are playing it.”

So a huge huge huge thank you to the players, builders, and most of all the Farcade team - all part of one of the kindest, weirdest, most supportive and inspiring communities I’ve ever been part of - and that extends all the way across Warpcast, Farcaster, and Base.

Let’s keep flapping. (Sorry, i tried not to say it, I swear)

My first idea was chess on Farcade.

After the first couple prompts I realized that was waay too big of a first project, especially over a weekend.

(btw I’m alllmost done with it 😵)

I knew I needed something simple but addictive like the first games on Farcade: Black Hole, GeoCrush, Tower Blocks..