Last week I saw Tony ship a full game solo with AI. I froze for a few seconds — three years ago I wanted to do the same thing and got stuck because I couldn't draw.

Scene: Wanting to build, but feeling unqualified

A friend who does content work vented to me last week: "I want to make a simple little game for my portfolio. I tried learning Unity for three weeks and gave up." I laughed — that was me three years ago. Learn code, or learn to draw, or have a music background. Just gathering those skills is enough to scare off 99% of people.

Tony's experiment changed how I see this

Tony Dinh is an indie developer. He recently posted that he used AI to build a small game called "Survive 10 Waves," hosted free at survive10waves.com. He says he can't draw at all, his coding is half-baked, but within two weeks he used Suno (an AI music generator) to produce the soundtrack. When I heard the demo I froze for a few seconds — industrial, dark-ambient BGM, exactly what I'd been picturing.

Even better: he says the inspiration came from a friend Marc's "vibe-coded" game — Marc also has no professional background, pure AI generation. The old logic was "I need a team to build anything." Now it's "me + AI can ship it solo."

Replicate cost

Money: Suno's basic plan is free (50 songs/month), Pro is $8/mo. The Godot game engine is completely free. Less than a milk tea across two weeks.

Time: 1-2 hours a day, two weeks to ship an MVP (minimum viable product). Tony says he just tinkered after work hours.

Technical barrier: Zero code required. I made this mistake before — I thought I had to learn Python to make AI obey me. Turns out Suno just wants plain-language descriptions like "industrial, slow tempo, dark mood" — hit Create and you're done.

First step: Open suno.com → Sign Up → enter Create → write down the mood you want → hit Create → wait 30 seconds and listen.

Should you try this now?

Just starting out (never shipped a product): Start with music on Suno, don't rush into games yet. Just feel the experience of "AI helps me ship my idea" — it'll change how you judge your own abilities.

Have 1-2 clients (starting to take work): Use AI tools to make a small piece for your portfolio. Even a 10-minute playable game beats a text-only resume. Marc landed collabs through his vibe-coded game.

Scaling up (team growing): AI tools today are mostly in the "individual productivity" phase — team collaboration isn't mature yet. Let team members each run AI experiments on side projects; don't push for company-wide transformation.

One last thing: this tool isn't for everyone. If your work doesn't touch content creation at all, skipping it for now is fine. But if you keep feeling like you "don't have enough skills" — AI might be the best afternoon you spend this year.