Paperclip Apocalypse

Inspiration

The paperclip maximizer is a famous thought experiment in AI safety: an optimizer so single-minded it converts the entire world into paperclips. This idea has always unsettled me, a machine that devours the world to make one useless thing. It's also a gloriously silly way to go, the apocalypse by office supplies, and that contrast became the whole point: a real, creeping dread you actually get to fight back against, made charming and genuinely fun.

What it does

Paperclip Apocalypse is a mobile lane tower-defense set in a warm hand-folded papercraft world that a paperclip-maximizer AI is slowly converting into wire. You hold the line with origami defenders as the machine advances. It pairs a charming, tactile art style with a quiet undercurrent of dread, and the premise is gleefully lopsided: a handful of clever paper folds holding off something powerful enough to turn the world into office supplies.

How I built it

A handful of mentor sessions were pivotal early on, where I worked through the competition's genres and pressure-tested concepts. Alongside them, I put significant time into researching the tower-defense genre: what makes the best ones tick, where it tends to get stale, and what a new entry actually has to earn. From there I developed the concept across four game design artifacts that all tell the same story. For the art, I locked a single visual style up front, then produced every asset through a node-based AI image pipeline anchored to that one style, so the whole package reads as one hand.

Challenges I ran into

The hardest challenge came before this game even existed: finding an idea that also worked as a mechanic. A concept can sound exciting and still have no satisfying way to play it, and a clever mechanic can fall flat without a theme that makes it matter. Paperclip Apocalypse is actually my third attempt. I put real time into two earlier concepts that never quite came together, each for its own reasons, before landing on one where the fantasy and the way it plays finally reinforced each other.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

A concept that feels genuinely different from a standard tower defense rather than a reskin, a distinctive and cohesive visual identity, and a complete set of design artifacts that all point at the same game.

What I learned

This was the first time I'd really thought hard about game design as a craft, everything it involves beyond just having an idea, and the skills I built along the way were genuinely invaluable.

What's next for Paperclip Apocalypse

More of the world to defend, more ways to fold, and bigger threats from the machine. This submission is a focused first slice; the full vision grows outward from there. The next step is taking it off paper(clip?) and into a playable prototype.

Built With

• claude
• figma