GhostNet

Digital Ghost Alley is a neon stealth-survival game where you collect data cubes, avoid glitching ghosts, and escape the alley. Fast, immersive, and fully built inside Kiro.

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Inspiration

Digital Ghost Alley was born from our college brainstorming sessions — where we were joking about “ghosts in the network”… and suddenly realized, hey, that’s actually a fun game idea.
We wanted something neon, fast-paced, a little spooky, and something we could fully build using Kiro's tools.
The project was inspired by cyberpunk aesthetics, glitch art, and classic stealth-survival maps — all recreated from scratch in a top-down style.

What it does

The game drops you into a neon alley filled with glitching digital ghosts.
You collect data cubes, avoid detection, follow the minimap, and escape through the EXIT once your data bar is full.
Dynamic visibility, ghost AI reactions, ambient audio, glowing UI, and smooth character animations all work together to create a tense cyber-stealth experience.

How we built it

We built everything from scratch:

  • Custom map design
  • Clean separated layers (roads + interiors)
  • Player idle + run animations
  • Ghost AI with roaming + chase modes
  • Data cube interactions
  • Minimap with icons + ghost radar
  • Neon UI pages (menu, story, pause, HUD)
  • Full audio system with footsteps, whispers, ambient loops

Kiro’s engine made it possible to prototype extremely fast.
We imported assets, set up collision masks, switched animations, handled events, scripted ghost behavior, and layered audio — all inside one environment.

Challenges we ran into

  • Getting perfect top-down assets without shadows
  • AI generation giving angled camera shots
  • Fixing mismatched shop interiors
  • Smoothly rotating and animating the player
  • Syncing ghost detection radius + audio
  • Data bar + health system integration
  • Death glitch effect behaving correctly
  • Organizing 50+ assets and scripts

Through constant iteration, strict prompt structure, and Kiro’s flexibility, we solved each challenge step by step.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a fully playable level in 48 hours
  • Created premium neon visuals with no shadows
  • Made ghosts that actually feel alive and reactive
  • Designed a clean UI system with animated transitions
  • Integrated layered audio like a real stealth game
  • Converted simple sketches into a solid cyber-map
  • Learned to use AI tools effectively as a team of college students

This is genuinely portfolio-worthy work we’re proud of.

What we learned

  • How to use Kiro as a full game engine
  • How to structure assets, layers, and map logic
  • How to manage animation states and collisions
  • How to build enemy AI with awareness + chase behavior
  • How strict, consistent prompting improves asset quality
  • How to mix manual design with AI-generated visuals
  • How to debug game logic quickly using event-based systems

We learned teamwork, fast iteration, creative problem solving, and how AI tools can boost our development speed massively.

What's next for GhostNet

  • Multi-level expansion with harder ghost patterns
  • Boss ghost mechanics
  • Player abilities (invisibility, sprint, hacking)
  • Save/load checkpoints
  • Mobile joystick + tap-to-move
  • Patrol ghosts, teleporter ghosts, blackout ghosts
  • Animated rain, fog, neon flickers
  • Publish-ready version for Itch.io, Play Store, and maybe Steam

GhostNet is just beginning — we’re ready to take it further.

Built With

  • kiro
  • klingai
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