SKIP AD: Popup Panic

Outsmart the ads.
BLOAT. Your desktop has company.
Keep your cool. Burn the CD.
Five hijackers. Five ways to wreck your desktop.
Revisit your collection in Internot Explorer.

Inspiration

I wanted to see how far I could get with zero experience building apps in general. I'm tech savvy, I don't code, I love video games, and I had a Claude subscription. Seemed like a logical pursuit. For the gameplay... I am a data privacy professional by trade. I'm sure most people on the internet these days have seen a cookie consent banner. The ones that are just theatrical at this point and the ones that people have grown fatigued to. "'Accept all' and get it out of my face." I combined that with my soft spot nostalgic 90s vibes and absurd, over-the-top ads I see in video games, whether they're billboards, TV commercials, or street signs (if you've played Deus Ex, Cyberpunk 2077, or have watched Bladerunner, you know what I mean.) I'm the dude that ignores the main storyline to zoom in on all the beautiful in-game assets someone put the time into making.

What it does

SKIP AD: Popup Panic is a casual game about closing popup ads with before they bury your screen and you get hit with the dreaded BSOD (game over). Positive actions closes the ads. Negative options spawn more ads. The art is inspired by the relentless 1990s popup ads with the absurdity cranked up, anchored by a classic and familiar operating system as the playing field. There are different categories of enemies: ads (tap/swipe/hold to close), bloatware (things that mess with your in-game taskbar), and system hijackers (full-screen minibosses).

Monetization is part of the joke and part of the design. Purchases run through the RevenueCat SDK. And yes, a game about closing popup ads serves real ads. AdMob placements are optional at the end of each run to continue gameplay or double rewards.

How we built it

I raw-dogged it using Opus 4.8 for dev work, and GPT 5.6 Sol Max to generate the ad artwork. That's pretty much it. As for the artwork, I used the imagegen skill and built a framework -- measurements, visual and code QA gates -- all on top of that skill. This allowed for animated ads by generating consistent frame-by-frame images. Fortunately, the games aesthetic naturally uses a lot of CSS and pixel art, so it wasn't completely freestyled.

Challenges we ran into

My professional experience is in tech and program management, and I have zero experience in both game and app development. Literally every aspect of this hackathon and app development in general was a new challenge -- I was 3d printing the plane as I was flying it. However, the most challenging aspect has been keeping up. While I don't code, I take the time to read and understand what was built, why it was built that way, and what can be optimized. Keeping up with AI development itself has been a whole other journey.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Development began mid-July. I was completely oblivious to Shipaton until late-August, at which point the app was already 5 days out from the target Play Store date. While a lot of sponsor perks from the Ship Kit would have been helpful for the development part (e.g., Emergent, Replit), I'm quite proud to be able to do this with just Claude Code and Codex as a first timer.

What we learned

Geez, this is going to be a big list. Much like the challenges, everything was pretty much a learning process, down to listing apps on the Play store and getting ads configured.

What's next for SKIP AD: Popup Panic

I set out on a challenge, and while the challenge is now been completed, my journey is not. Next is more and more iterations - smaller bundled packages, more consistent SFX and music, phased art rework (commissioned). Now that there isn't a time constraint, I'd like to be more deliberate with the direction.