What 5 Gamers Learned from Vibe Coding for the YGG Play x Verse8 Game Hackathon

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At BuidlHack 2026 during Korea Buidl Week in April, 120 teams built fully functional vibe coded games for the YGG Play x Verse8 Casual Degen track.

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The creators all came from different backgrounds and had varying levels of coding experience, with or without AI. Some had never tried building a game before the hackathon, while others had been experimenting for a while or were regular builders.

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Five of those creators shared what brought them to the hackathon, and what anyone curious about vibe coding can discover when they give it a try.

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Design for Your Community

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Authoritylase is a student who had already experimented with vibe coding but had no formal programming background. She entered the hackathon expecting the process would demand skills she didn’t have.

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Her game, Degen Dash, is an endless runner capturing the fast-paced nature of crypto. She wanted something easy to understand but with enough depth to keep people coming back.

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Vibe coding Degen Dash let her focus more on the player experience, pacing, and replayability, designing for an audience she understood from the inside. 

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Think It, Build It

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Jeshiling is a software engineer with a background in physics and statistics who builds apps as side projects. He had been thinking about making his own game for too long and joined the hackathon to finally make it real. 

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His project, Spin the Narrative, lets players spin the reels to generate narrative events that shape their project’s fate differently every session. The idea behind it was that no two playthroughs should feel the same.

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Traditional programming meant translating his vision through layers of syntax. Vibe coding let him describe what he wanted directly, so his analytical and design thinking worked together without code getting in the way.

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Start with What You Know

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Playing other crypto games had shown shepherd that degens wanted something fun to play instead of just watching the charts. Even before joining the hackathon, he had an idea for what kind of game he wanted to build. He just didn’t know how to code.

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What he did have was deep knowledge of crypto culture and a player’s instinct for what feels good.

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Vibe coding gave him a way to leverage his strengths and bring his vision into reality without needing to learn how to be a programmer. His 3D endless runner, Abstract Dashers, went from concept to playable in just days.

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Create Without Friction

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Inzane_jane had already been experimenting with vibe coding for some time, inspired by iconic games like Super Mario, Chicken Invaders, and the Dinosaur Game on Chrome. However, she was using different tools and platforms to piece together her workflow.

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With those tools moving to a single vibe coding platform, Inzane_jane’s focus shifted from wrestling with asset management, URL hosting, and context switching between apps to pure design. 

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Her understanding of what makes a game engaging could now lead the way. Her arcade game, Degen Bubble Shooter, was inspired by classic bubble shooters. The game adds hidden bombs and a bonus system that keeps every shot unpredictable.

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Test Ideas in Real Time

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0x_zeke joined the hackathon because building a Casual Degen game aligned with his interests in crypto and gaming. He wanted to turn a feeling every trader knows into interactive gameplay.

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0x_zeke’s game, Alpha Leak, is a fast-paced decision-making game where players read crypto-style signals and decide whether to “ape or ignore.” Vibe coding made the feedback loop fast enough to validate ideas in real time. 

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The ability to build, play, refine, and test again within hours meant he could make better design choices based on how the game actually played rather than theoretical plans.

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Turning Gamers into Builders

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“Vibe coding opens game creation to different kinds of creators,” said Gabby Dizon, co-founder of YGG. “Now the best games can come from gamers, streamers, students, people who think in terms of culture and experience, who like to try new things and discover opportunities through them. Vibe coding lets them be the builders."

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Authoritylase, Jeshiling, Shepherd, Inzane_jane, and 0x_zeke may have come from different technical backgrounds, but they all know what makes games fun to play — something that comes from being gamers at heart. They had ideas they wanted to try and vibe coding gave them a way to find out if those ideas actually worked.

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Interested in vibe coding your own game? Join the YGG Play Discord and follow YGG Play on X to be the first to hear about the latest vibe coding events.

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