The best AI tools for making games, compared plainly

Three kinds of tool

Chat assistants: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok

You describe a game in a chat and get a single HTML file back. Open it, play it, ask for changes. This is the fastest way to a playable game and the easiest for a beginner. It works best for games that fit in one file.

Coding agents: Claude Code, Codex

These run in a terminal or app and work inside a project folder: reading files, writing them, running tests, fixing errors. They suit larger games, multiple files and anything you want checked automatically. We used Codex to build every game on this site.

AI editors: Cursor

An editor that sits in your coding workspace and edits files as you ask. Good if you want to see and tweak the code alongside the AI. Many games in our directory credit Cursor.

Pick by situation

• Never coded, want a quick game: a chat assistant.
• Want a bigger or 3D game: a coding agent or an AI editor.
• Want to understand the code: an AI editor.
• Want it tested and checked for you: a coding agent that can run commands.

What the directory suggests

Among the 251 games in our directory, 30% name a tool, and the most frequently named are Claude, Gemini, Cursor. That's a reflection of who shares games and says what they used, not a ranking of quality, and creators often use more than one tool.

What we can't tell you

We haven't run controlled benchmarks, and tools change every few months, so we won't tell you which is "best". What matters more than the tool is the prompt and the testing. Learn those first with our beginner guide and the prompt examples.

A realistic first week

1. Day 1. Pick the game and write one prompt. Get a playable first draft.
2. Day 2 to 3. Fix controls and the restart. Test on your phone.
3. Day 4. Adjust difficulty and look. Change one thing at a time.
4. Day 5. Put it online and send it to three friends.
5. Day 6 to 7. Fix what they report and decide whether it's finished.

Whatever tool you pick, that rhythm works.