Circuit Breach: Aegis OS

A terminal-based tower defense game where Gemini 3 acts as the Aegis OS Kernel, dynamically rebalancing the game difficulty and selecting your towers based on real-time performance telemetry.

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Inspiration

After months of job-hunting burnout, I wanted a project that combined my lifelong love of computers and games with everything I’ve been learning about AI. Tower defense and deck-building games have always hooked me with their progression and replay ability, so building my own felt like the perfect hackathon challenge.

What it does

Circuit Breach: Aegis OS is a cyberpunk computer hacker tower defense game with a card-driven loadout system where players assemble and upgrade defenses from a deck as malware threats escalate. The vision is to weave AI into assets, level ideas, and encounter logic so each run feels fresh while still being strategically fair.

How we built it

I used Comet Pro to research Gemini 3 rules, Gemini API docs, and core mechanics of tower defense and deck-building games. That research was exported into NotebookLM, where I organized design notes and distilled them into prompt-ready specs for Google AI Studio to generate game logic and content, with frequent GitHub checkpoints and playtesting

Challenges we ran into

Vibe coding at its best (and worst), as I would fix defects, enhance features, change UI or other elements, found that some of the prompts produced undesirable results or removed otherwise working features. I also found that I went down some rabbit holes (scope creep) that I needed to just leave out as time wound towards deadline

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is my very first hackathon and I’m proud of turning a rough personal situation into a concrete prototype that actually plays like the games I enjoy. Getting Comet Pro, NotebookLM, and AI Studio talking together as a lightweight “AI pipeline” for game design was a big milestone.

What we learned

I learned how powerful it is to treat AI tools as collaborators: one for research, one for synthesis, and one for generation and implementation. I also learned to aggressively cut scope (like postponing 3D/XR) to hit a functional v1.0 instead of chasing a perfect vision.

What's next for Circuit Breach: Aegis OS

a LOT as time allows, I want to experiment with multimodal Gemini features for procedural level sketches, enemy concepts, and UI ideas, then evolve toward an XR version once the core loop is solid. I’ll keep refining card and tower synergies, add progression systems, and harden the codebase so this hackathon prototype can grow into a portfolio-ready game.

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