So, picture this: it’s a random evening, I’ve got about four hours of “me time,” and instead of melting into the couch with Netflix and a bag of chips, I decide to do something wild. I built a web browser video game. Not with fancy dev tools like Unity or some slick IDE—nope, just me, Grok (the AI beast from xAI), Photoshop, and a whole lot of curiosity. The result? Angry Jets—a cheeky little riff on Angry Birds, but with jets, keyboard controls, and a surprising amount of office chaos. Let me tell you how it went down.

The Big Idea: Evolving My AI Game (Literally)

I’ve been messing around with AI for a while now, and I’m obsessed with figuring out how these machines tick. How do they reason? How do they save info? And most importantly, how can I bend them to my will with nothing but clever prompts? So, I set myself a challenge: build a game using only Grok and Photoshop, no other dev crutches like Cursor or whatever. The goal wasn’t just to make something playable—it was to level up my prompting skills and see how far I could push this AI-human collab.

The game concept was simple but fun: Angry Jets. Think Angry Birds vibes, but instead of slingshotting birds at pigs, you’re piloting a jet with the up and down arrow keys, dodging a swarm of enemy aircraft coming at you. Classic arcade-style madness. I figured it’d be a cool way to test my tech chops and maybe impress the FlyUSA crew if it didn’t totally suck.

The Process: Prompts, Pixels, and Patience

So, I cracked open my laptop, fired up Grok, and started typing. First step was nailing the game logic. I told Grok, “Hey, I want a game where you fly a jet with up/down keys and dodge stuff. Break it down for me.” Grok spat out a rough framework—think basic mechanics like jet movement, enemy spawns, and collision detection. It wasn’t code-ready (I wasn’t about to compile anything), but it gave me a skeleton to work with.

From there, it was all about progressive prompting. I’d say stuff like, “Okay, now make the jet move smoother,” or “How do I spawn enemies at random intervals?” Grok kept throwing ideas back, and I’d refine them with follow-ups like, “Nah, that’s too clunky—simplify it.” It was like training a super-smart intern who occasionally overthinks things. Over a couple hours, we hammered out a solid game loop, all through text prompts. No fancy IDE, no Git commits—just me and Grok riffing like a tech jazz band.

Then came the visuals. I hopped into Photoshop and whipped up some quick assets: a sleek jet for the player, some goofy enemy planes, and a basic sky background. Nothing award-winning, but it had charm. I leaned on Grok again here, asking, “How should I animate this jet flapping its wings?” (Okay, jets don’t flap, but you get the vibe.) Grok suggested a simple up/down tilt effect tied to the key presses, and I mocked it up in Photoshop layers, threw in some Top Gun music for background effect. Boom—good enough!

The Build: Four Hours of Chaos and Coffee

Here’s the kicker: the whole thing took about four hours. One evening. No Netflix, no scrolling X, just me hunched over my desk, muttering at Grok and tweaking pixels. I used Grok to simulate the game logic step-by-step—think of it like a virtual dry run. I’d prompt, “If the jet’s at y=200 and an enemy spawns at y=210, what happens?” Grok would reason it out, and I’d adjust my mental blueprint. By hour three, I had a working concept I could “play” in my head, and by hour four, I’d stitched it into a rough-but-fun prototype using some basic web tools I mocked up with Grok’s help. (No, I’m not spilling all my secrets—let’s just say I’m resourceful.)

The result: an HTML ready drop in game play relying on no exterior code or external files to work. Simply drop into a WordPress block and boom!

The Payoff: Office Jet Jockeys Go Wild

The next day, I brought Angry Jets into FlyUSA, mostly to show off to a couple coworkers. Big mistake—or maybe genius move? Within an hour, half the staff was huddled around my desk, slamming up/down keys, trash-talking each other, and trying to beat my high score (which, naturally, I set pretty darn high). It turned into this hilarious mini-competition—people shouting, “No way you dodged that!” and “Gimme one more shot!” I’d accidentally created an office distraction monster. I might have to shelve it before productivity tanks entirely—sorry, team! 😂

The Real Win: Leveling Up My AI Chops

Look, Angry Jets isn’t winning any Game of the Year awards. It’s rough, it’s simple, and the hitboxes are probably wonky. But that wasn’t the point. The real flex here was evolving my AI game—pun intended. I learned how to chain prompts to build something complex, how Grok “thinks” through iterative steps, and how to wrangle its output into something usable. Plus, I proved you don’t need a full dev suite to make something fun—just a sharp mind, a sharper AI, and a willingness to skip the Netflix queue for a night.

So yeah, I’m pretty stoked. This little side project showed me I’m onto something in this AI space. I’m not just playing with tech—I’m bending it, shaping it, and making it do cool stuff. Next up? Maybe I’ll tackle something bigger. Or maybe I’ll just chill with some Netflix after all. Either way, Angry Jets was a blast, and I’ve got the FlyUSA crew’s jet-dodging scars to prove it.

What do you think—should I polish this bad boy up or start a new AI adventure? Hit me up with your thoughts!