My First Big Creature Prompt

The first big prompt I sent for this project was not small.

That is probably the kindest way to say it.

I did not ask for a button, or a simple page, or a little practice app. I asked for an infinite creature evolution simulator. A mobile-first game where you raise unique AI-generated creatures, feed them, watch them change, and keep coming back to see what they become.

At the time, I was calling it Genesis Beasts. Later it became Species Zero, which fits the mood a little better. It sounds more like the strange little world I had in my head.

I should say this clearly: I do not have a coding background. I was not sitting there with a technical plan. I had an idea, some enthusiasm, and the dangerous confidence that comes from seeing AI make things appear on a screen.

So my first big ask was basically: make me the starting version of this game.

I wanted accounts, creatures, feeding, progression, and a sense that each creature was different. I wanted it to work on a phone. I wanted the thing to feel like a game, not just a form with a cute picture attached.

And then the AI came back with... a lot.

There was an actual app structure. There were screens. There was account creation. There were creatures to look at and interact with. It was connected to cloud storage, which meant the game could remember things instead of forgetting everything the moment I refreshed the page.

For a non-technical person, that part is hard to describe. It feels a bit like asking someone to draw a house and then turning around to find a small house has been framed in your yard.

Not finished. Not painted. Probably missing a few important inspections. But definitely a house.

My first reaction was excitement. My second reaction was confusion.

Because something can technically exist and still not make sense yet.

The early version had pieces of a game, but I did not always understand what I was supposed to do next. After feeding a creature, I remember hitting that familiar wall of, “Okay… now what?” The app was doing things, but it was not teaching me the loop.

That became one of the first important lessons of the project: if I, the person who imagined the thing, do not understand what happens after feeding, a new player definitely will not.

So we added a small hint system to point players toward the next step. Nothing fancy. Just a clearer nudge. But it made the whole experience feel less like wandering around in a dark room.

There were also early bumps that reminded me I was not in magic-land. Account creation looked like it had failed, but it had actually worked. Another missing piece caused the preview to break with ugly loading errors. Later, there were other preview problems too, including one where the app seemed to get stuck while trying to calculate creature changes.

This is where the romance of AI building meets the reality of software: it can make big leaps, but it can also trip over a shoelace.

Did the first big prompt live up to my expectations?

Yes and no.

Yes, because I expected a rough beginning and got something far more complete than I could ever have made myself. I had a playable shape. A world had started to form.

No, because I secretly hoped the AI would understand the “fun” part automatically. It did not. It built features, but features are not the same as a satisfying game. Feeding, evolving, waiting, discovering — those things needed rhythm. They needed personality. They needed reasons to care.

That realization came harder later, when I admitted to myself, “This game is not good.” But the seeds of that were already there in the first build.

The AI could help me make the thing. It could not save me from needing to know what the thing should feel like.

Small takeaway: a big prompt can create a beginning, but it still needs a human to notice what is missing.