Hey everyone, 

Today is day 14 of a project I've been working on called ShuffleBall Arena.  
   
ShuffleBall Arena is a free browser game for mobile or desktop. The goal was to have shuffleboard style scoring, with some added craziness of other games. I also wanted to make something small enough to ship quickly, but polished enough that I could post it publicly and see if other people actually want to play.   
  
I’m hoping to start posting here more often to document the project and the experience, and this felt like a good milestone to start with. Feel free to follow r/StructuredAI if you’re interested in updates or want to post about your own AI-assisted projects.  
  
Anyway, I just finished building the first public challenge mode for ShuffleBall Arena and thought I'd share what went into it.

Right now, the game includes moving crossing lanes similar to Frogger, bumpers like in bumper pool, gravity wells that bend shots, and wormholes that transport shots to launchers that fire them back out at random. Version 1 is space themed, and I’ve been trying to give it a bit more of a pinball feel.  
  
This first challenge is simple: **Score 220 points in 3 games.**

What made today interesting was not just the code itself, it was the amount of decisions involved in what I thought was going to be a small part of this project:  
  
\- What's the simplest way to store player names and high scores without building a full account system?  
\- How do you design a first challenge that is hard enough to be interesting but not so hard that people quit immediately?  
\- What should stay the same as the regular game, and what should be different?  
\- How do you make the bot challenging without feeling unfair?  
\- How do you track challenge attempts without requiring an account?  
\- How do you make it feel public-facing without building a full backend too early?  
\- How much UI polish is enough before posting it publicly?  
  
Today, I used ChatGPT and Cursor to help turn those goals into a detailed build plan, break the work into smaller phases, and debug the specific problems that came up while testing.  
  
The most time consuming parts were honestly the tiny details.   
I guess the last 20% became 80% of the work.  
  
\- The name modal kept closing too fast on mobile.  
\- The analytics banner positioning caused issues with Reddit’s bottom navbar on mobile, which made the app look broken or frozen.  
\- The bot kept waiting too long to shoot, then sometimes fired straight into the moving lane obstacles when it finally took the shot.  
  
None of those are huge features by themselves, but I feel like they are the little things that decide whether something feels playable or frustrating. They ended up taking longer than expected.  
  
I’m trying to use this challenge as a small validation test before building anything bigger like accounts, leaderboards, or a more serious public challenge system.  
  
You can try the challenge here if interested:  
[https://play.shuffleballarena.com/crossing-drift-challenge](https://play.shuffleballarena.com/crossing-drift-challenge)

Or to play the regular game: [http://play.shuffleballarena.com](http://play.shuffleballarena.com)  
  
It is a free browser game. No downloads. No accounts.  
  
I'm wondering what people think about the challenge flow itself:  
  
Is 220 points too easy or too hard?

Does the mobile experience feel clear enough?

Are there any features or game mechanics you think should be added?

Thanks for reading!

Using ChatGPT and Cursor to build and ship a free browser game challenge for ShuffleBall Arena