Show HN: A satirical idle game about running an AI startup
1 day ago (game.trae.academy)
I made an idle/clicker about running an AI startup. You start with a cat-vs-dog classifier and try to make it to AGI, but the NYT sues you for training data, Yann tweets that scaling is dead, and your fired ML engineer leaks the Slack.
- Doesn't feel like an idle game because you can 'prestige' within a few minutes and also there's never a clear moment to step away because the next tier is always only 20 to 30 seconds away.
- 'Step training' sucks because there is no way to do more than x0.1 at a time
- Launching with a store full of microtransactions when the game is puddle deep feels bad; everyone has to make money but having 4 microtransactions + 4 subscriptions while your research tree is only 9 steps makes this feel like a cashgrab rather than a game
- There's no clear way to buy hardware to improve
- The 'end game' is meaningless. There's no real reason to even play because there's no "Oh yeah!!!" feeling; it's purely just big numbers which I do love for idle games but there's no grand story that makes me feel powerful.
- There's absolutely no compelling reason to hire anyone because effectively you can just bum research, wait 5 to 10 minutes, click all the research then you just click 'step training' over and over then sell your company.
Vibe-coded? Runs poorly, and the balancing makes no sense.
I did use some existing code as a reference. If you have any feedback, I’ll be happy to make adjustments. Please feel free to let me know.