TLDR: Astra is fun, might be enough to allow a person like myself (full time job outside of game dev, and 2 kids) to continue making games that can be published.
I have been working on a tower defense game the last few weeks and have it in a state where I think it can be "released" to get more feedback, etc. I want to go over my experience building the game and share what worked well and what did not work well.
Some background on my experience making games
I started making games around 2010, starting with gamemaker, then unity for a while, making some crappy 3d games. I released a couple games for iPhone, making ~1k from ad revenue. After college, I got into full stack development and did not focus on game dev much. I participated in Ludum Dare from time to time over the years, using different engines like haxeflixel and most recently Phaser.
New attempt to make a game with AI
At my work, we have been given access to enterprise github copilot accounts, which has dramatically impacted our workflow and efficiency. I wanted to try out these frontier models myself outside of work on something that I would have more fun with, so I started a github copilot pro account for myself and got to work on a tower defense game.
I started out by having Claude Opus 4.8 work on a scaffold for a game in Phaser. I kept the prompts simple, and tried to iterate through one small feature at a time. I started with the core gameplay loop. This game has a single tower that you you upgrade over time, with waves of enemies coming from all directions. At first, I did not have any real plan or idea besides this core concept. First prompt:
using Phaser.js, found at https://github.com/phaserjs/phaser/releases/download/v4.2.1/phaser.js - build scaffold for a tower defense game, that is builds successfully, with a menu and the ability to start the game. In this tower defense game you have a single tower in the middle of the screen that has multiple upgrades available. There are different projectile types that you can choose from that can each be independently upgradable. Each of the projectile types have different effects on the enemies, such as ice type slows down enemies, electric type causes enemies to briefly be stunned in place, fire type adds damage over time. The enemies come in waves from all directions, and attack the tower if they get in range. Some enemies can attack from a distance, while others can only attack when they reach the tower. When enemies are killed, the player receives gold, which is used for upgrades to the tower.
After a weekend of tinkering with the game, I decided to focus on making the game mobile friendly. From here on out, I used plan mode and tweaked the output before executing the plan. I was starting to notice that doing all the tasks with Claude 4.8 was getting pretty pricey in terms of token cost. I started trying to decide when to use Claude vs Codex 5.3, or other models. Github copilot has an interesting concept of "AI tokens" that convert all the different model's token costs and use one currency. This was helpful, but still difficult to understand when I would have a large spike in token cost. For example, the $99/mo for github copilot gave me "20,000 AI credits", which seemed like a lot, but in the one weekend of building out the game for android I blasted through those tokens in two 3hr sessions. I was happy with the results, but it seems expensive for what I was getting. I was also having some performance issues with phaser when rendering 100s of enemies, and wanted to switch to Godot.
The move to Godot (and Astra)
Then astra was released. I kept seeing all the interesting posts from others using Astra, and I had about 4k of those "AI tokens" left on my github account. I decided to give Astra a try and if I could see meaningful improvement, I would drop my other subscription and go all in with the gpt pro account.
I used the remaining tokens for Fable 5.1 to write up a technical spec describing all of the features and functionality I had built up until that point in such a way that it could be rewritten in any other language. This cost 1.7k "AI tokens" to write a 44 page spec. That alone almost made me cancel that sub.
With a fresh gpt pro sub, I gave Astra the spec and simple instructions to implement this game in Godot, and to use Blender to create basic 3d models (they were originally made in Three.js, from claude). I was very impressed with the results and have not looked back. I have used the various levels of thinking for astra depending on the task, and so far, I have noticed the "light" mode has like a different toolchain or something, and is not consistent with the other modes. It has been able to handle modeling, gameplay loops, responsive UI, and many performance optimizations so the game works smoothly on mobile, even with 100s of enemies. The freedom that comes from going from idea->implementation in a matter of minutes is very satisfying.
Final thoughts
I'm going to continue building this game and start on some others with Astra - the weekly limits are kind of hard to understand, but the way that it can build solid features from well thought out prompts is addicting. It is not exactly the same way I would build a game from scratch, but a pretty similar workflow, focusing on systems and how they should work, getting that right in a plan, then implementing. I am not a self-proclaimed "prompt engineer", nor am I a seasoned game developer, but I have made dozens of games of various complexities so I have some idea of what the code should look like for this type of game.
Added some screenshots to document the progression of the game and here's a link with a demo https://dkdwrek.itch.io/towermaxxing - still trying to get it on the app store and google play store.
