JACK / BUSHFIRE GAMES

WHY I’M USING AI
TO MAKE NUNCHOOKS.

Hi! I’m Jack, and this is my first game. I have 15 years experience in CGI, and 26 in failing to learn to code. My wife and I came up with the idea on a hike in Queensland in 2024. It stayed in my head until experiments with an assisted workflow started to make it feel possible.

I know AI is controversial. I want to be open about using it rather than hide that part of how this game is being made.

A DOOR I KEPT TRYING TO OPEN

I’ve always tried to keep learning. When I was 7, my mum encouraged me to make a website about our pet dog (...It's just what people did in the early days of the internet). We were in a council house, connecting to the internet over dial-up on a Windows 95 computer. That was the start of about 26 years of trying to learn how to code.

I have tried everything from HTML to MaxScript. Python to Rust. Kotlin to Swift. I've read countless books and spent more money than I care to admit on courses. I kept coming back to it, but it never clicked for me. My brain just doesn’t seem to work that way. It was hard to accept that something I wanted to learn so badly could stay out of reach despite the effort I put in. But it has never stopped me trying.

AI, and specifically, as of writing, Claude Code Opus 5.5, has given me access to a skill I thought I would never be able to learn, no matter how hard I tried. I can finally put that curiosity to work and build things I used to only imagine. After years of trying to open that door, I can't describe how freeing it feels.

MAKING THE IDEA POSSIBLE

I’m using Godot, Blender, LLMs and AI 3D generation tools to lower the barriers and shorten the time it takes to make a quality game. I’m one person making a passion project without a production budget. These tools let me attempt work at a scale I could not otherwise take on alone.

That is the part of this change that excites me. More people can take an idea seriously and start building it. A dedicated person can do work that previously needed a much larger team.

THE FREEDOM TO MAKE THIS GAME

I want to make the game my wife and I imagined. I do not want the possibility of making it to depend on persuading a boardroom that our strange little idea deserves to exist.

For me, this workflow opens a door. It gives me more room to experiment, learn and keep working toward the game I want to make. That freedom is why I’m leaning into these tools and being honest about them.

I don’t see any value or professional pride in spending hours tracking down missing semicolons, or spending days manually updating a character’s belt colour across every asset it appears in. I think attention to detail is important, but delivery is more important.

So if you see a chicken foot with 5 toes (they're supposed to have 4, although silkies have 5... anyway), or a storyboard frame that lacks a bit of consistency, let me know and I’ll be sure to try to fix it in an update! Just remember: this is one bloke with no money who made this in days. Not a team with a budget and years to work on it.

GIVING SOMETHING BACK

If my weird little game is successful, I’d like to donate to the Godot and Blender foundations. These tools, and the communities behind them, also made NUNCHOOKS possible. I’d love to give something back and help make that same opportunity available to someone else.

A PASSION PROJECT, SHARED OPENLY

I’m still making my first game. NUNCHOOKS is the result of an idea we care about and my attempt to turn it into something people can play. I hope you love it as much as we do.

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