Return of the Coder
Sample gallery

Six playable idle games, one rule-based composer.

Each game below was assembled from a short feature description by a deterministic expert system. 600+ rules across 21 decision domains fire to produce a manifest; the assembler turns the manifest into a single-file HTML game. Every game is seeded, explainable, and permanently yours.

80+ presets · 21 decision domains · 0 LLM at runtime
· Work in progress — real output, still being refined ·
600+
Expert-system rules
80+
Feature presets
~800 KB
Typical game size
0
Runtime AI calls
Mood · Cozy Cozy Management Gentle management clicker Warm palette, unlimited forgiveness, generators and upgrades arranged for long sessions of comfort. Play → Mood · Ominous Eldritch Deep Deep incremental with dread Prestige, ascension, challenges, and a creeping sense that the numbers are watching back. Play → Mood · Meditative Cosmic Meditation Slow-paced celestial idler Minimal UI, ambient progression, tuned for a gentle session loop rather than click-frenzy. Play → Mood · Neon Neon Hacker Cyberpunk incremental Terminal aesthetic, research nodes as exploit chains, themed resource icons for the darker timeline. Play → Mood · Satirical Absurd Bureaucracy Paperwork singularity Stamps, forms, sub-forms, meta-forms. A satirical idler where productivity itself becomes the villain. Play → Mood · Epic Dragon Hoard Fantasy accumulator Gold, gems, relics, and dragons. Classic epic-fantasy progression with multi-tier upgrades and research. Play →

How it works

You describe an idle game with a small set of features — mood, depth, session-shape, number-scale. The composer runs 600+ rules across these 21 decision domains to produce a manifest:

The manifest declares 3–12 generators, 6–72 multi-tier upgrades, 0–10 research nodes, prestige with challenges, 39–102 achievements, themed resource icons, ambient audio, lore drops at lifetime milestones — all explainable. Every decision traces to a specific rule firing.

The assembler then templates the manifest into a single-file HTML game with save/load, keyboard nav, ARIA live regions, number tweens, click floaters, sound, particles, and confetti. Output formats include single-file, multi-file, PWA, and multipage for itch.io listings.

Beyond generate, the toolchain includes explain (trace the firing chain), sim (Monte Carlo pacing report), tune (auto-tune rule parameters), and validate (rule-base health check).

This is one of seven systems built alongside the Return of the Coder essay to demonstrate the same method: use AI to extract the rules, then run the rule-based system without AI.