Project Shift

Inspiration

I like puzzle games, but I wanted to make something where both players are playing on the same board. Every move should matter not only for you, but also for your opponent. That was the main idea when I started Project Shift.

What it does

Project Shift is a competitive puzzle game for two players.

Both players play on one shared board. Every move changes the board for both of them, so you always have to think about what your move will do next.

One thing that makes the game different is that matched pieces disappear and empty spaces stay empty. There are no random pieces falling from the top, so the board slowly changes during the game and every match can open new possibilities.

I also built a Balance Lab and AI simulations, because I wanted to test game rules instead of only guessing what feels balanced.

How I built it

The game is made with plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

I used GPT-5.6 a lot during development. It helped me think through mechanics, review code, find bugs and discuss different ideas. I also used Codex for part of the implementation to speed up development, but I always decided myself what should stay in the game.

Challenges

The hardest part was finding rules that are fun and fair.

Many ideas sounded good at first but didn't play well after testing. Because of that I spent quite a lot of time making AI simulations that can play hundreds of games and compare different rule sets.

What's next

This is only the beginning.

I want to improve the AI, continue balancing the game, make the mobile controls better and eventually add online multiplayer. My goal is to create an original competitive puzzle game that feels different from existing games.

I know there is still a lot of work to do, but after building this prototype I feel the idea has potential and I want to keep developing it.

Built With

• ai
• codex
• css
• github
• gpt-5.6
• html
• javascript