Similar to how there are certain things you can recognize in AI generated text (emdashes, emojis, negative parallelisms, and so on) or images (yellowish tints, thick borders around text, and so on), I’ve seen a lot of vibe coded games and found them to be recognizable as well.
The text and image “tells” are pretty well documented already, so I wanted to make a list for vibe coded games, since I recognize them quickly from browsing the curation feed for plusone as well as the games submitted to galaxy.click.
Also, these “tells” are likely only going to apply to games that are substantially vibe coded, or at least the UI is. Also keep in mind a lot of these can just happen to regular games, and try not to witch hunt games off a sign or two. Or ideally, don’t witch hunt at all. I don’t like AI generated content for a number of reasons, but none of them justify attacking someone for using it. I just hope to see vibe coding be discouraged so we can get back to our regular cycles of humans innovating and creating and iterating over time.
The tells I’ve recognized:
- Achievements, particularly early ones like “first click” or multiple for the same action
- Emojis used throughout the UI
- A modal that opens up on first launch, often with basic instructions or basic lore
- Neon glows or outlines on UI elements
- Things in game have overly long explanations of what mechanics do
- Overly grandiose names for upgrades
- Random events mechanic
It's hard to describe the UI style they tend to have beyond “I know it when I see it”, but here's my best attempt:
- UI is broken up into nested rounded rectangles with margins between them
- Buttons or icons with a background that’s just the text/icon color but slightly transparent
Naturally, use of AI generated images or the game description also correlate with being vibe coded, although not always. I've noticed that LLM generated game descriptions tend to have a list of “features”, including things like auto save or offline production, and often starting each line item with an emoji.
Several other “tells” could also be summarized as bad or weird game design or balancing, as that’s something LLMs aren’t good at. But that could also be an inexperienced dev who is still learning. Just remember, vibe coded or not, they’re still a human.
And here’s a collection of self-disclosed vibe coded games you can use as reference:
- Idle Ant Farm
- Double or Nothing!
- Neural Game Maker
- Yet Another Incremental Game But This Time About Coding
- Prime Time Idle
- Squares
- Celestial Forge
- Ethereal Ascension
- Idle Looter
- Echoes of the Mana Tomb
You can find plenty more on the plusone game explorer as well, if the above isn't enough to recognoze “the look”.
Others have started recognizing these tells as well. Here's some other pages documenting the tells they've recognized with more examples:
- Show HN submissions tripled and now mostly share the same vibe-coded look
- Rounded rects in grids of slop
- Slop (Sort of an ad for their tools, which use AI ironically enough)
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