LODESTONE

A cozy pixel RPG about why you can’t vibecode a whole project in one prompt. A duck, a broken AI, and how real projects get made one small step at a time. Stop vibecoding. Start building.

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Inspiration

Vibe coding has lowered the barrier to building software, but it hasn’t removed the hard part: deciding what to build and how to ask for it. For hackathon beginners, the gap between an idea and an effective prompt may show up in three ways: asking AI to do too much at once, leaving out important constraints or context, or not breaking a complex feature into manageable steps. At a fast-paced event where people from all kinds of backgrounds are building their first project with AI, generating too much at once comes naturally. We wanted to give beginners a better process, and we wanted it to be fun to learn.

What it does

LODESTONE is a cozy pixel-art RPG and crash course that guides beginners to ship more responsibly in the age of AI.

The game opens with Pip, who asks an AI to build a big working website all at once. Pip explodes, and the steampunk town goes dark. To bring it back, Pip gathers gear components by working with six mentors who walk through the process of building a project: idea, plan, build, debug, deploy, and submit. Each mentor gives a short lesson and a quick quiz, and every gear earned lights up more of the town.

Along the way, players learn the basics of structuring a prompt, essential git commands, how to use Node.js, how to push their work, and what a project looks like from start to finish. Players can also talk with townspeople to ask for tips on more niche subjects, and 13 hidden notes around the town share lessons from this weekend’s workshops.

LODESTONE isn’t about using less AI. It’s about using AI as a tool, not a solution, so you can build something you understand and actually finish.

How we built it

LODESTONE is built with vanilla JavaScript, HTML Canvas, and Vite. All of the art is drawn in code, so the game uses no external image assets. It also has an original soundtrack and runs in any browser with nothing to install.

Challenges we ran into

We struggled with ideation and communication, pivoting between loosely defined ideas before settling on one. After scoping down, the challenges were more technical: hard-coding every sprite and tile as a pixel grid while keeping the art consistent, fixing a bug that crashed the grass tiles, and composing an original soundtrack in BeepBox that sat under the dialogue without drowning it out. Writing dialogue and quiz options that taught each lesson clearly also took several rounds of revision.

What we learned

We learned to treat AI as a tool instead of a solution, and to break a project into small goals that build into one finished product. We also learned how much a clear process matters when you’re building something for the first time.

What’s next for LODESTONE

We’d like to add more lessons and mentors, expand the townspeople’s tips, and test how well the game helps beginners write better prompts.

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