How to Make a Game With AI: A Prompt-First Workflow (No Code)

Most "make a game with AI" guides stop at "type a prompt and hope". This one is about the part that actually decides whether you end up with something playable: how you write the first prompt, how you test it, and how you edit it without breaking what already works.

I'll use EvonX, a browser-based AI game maker I work on, for the examples, but the workflow applies to any prompt-to-game tool.

One sentence is enough to get a first build. A better sentence has five parts:

A tower defense game in a frozen harbour. Defend the lighthouse for 15 waves. Towers are fishing boats you place on the water. Twist: ice spreads each wave, so you lose space over time.

Compare that with "make a tower defense game". The second prompt forces the AI to guess four things, and it will guess the most generic option every time.

The first build is a draft, not a result. Play it for two minutes and write down only three things:

Fix broken first, boring second, missing last. Mixing them in one prompt is the most common reason AI edits go wrong.

Good edit prompts read like bug tickets:

Bad edit prompts read like wishes: "make it more fun", "improve the graphics". The AI has no idea which of fifty things you mean.

One change per prompt also makes it easy to undo when something breaks.

AI tools are good at art and decent at code. Where they slip is balance: a level that cannot be won, or a curve that jumps from trivial to impossible. Play the first five levels yourself, or ask for a difficulty curve directly ("each level should need about 10 percent more moves than the last"). EvonX checks that each generated level is winnable, but you should still feel the curve with your own hands.

Share a link with three friends before you polish anything. Watch where they quit. That is your next prompt.

If you want to try this workflow, EvonX has a free starter plan and runs in the browser. You can browse example games to see what a first build looks like before writing your own prompt.

What genre would you try first? I'd like to hear which prompts work for you and which ones fall apart.