A Generative AI Game Jam Case Study from October 2024

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) promises to democratize many creative endeavors, from art, to music, to writing. However, video games are an underexplored field for GenAI given the highly multi-modal and interactive nature. In this work, we present a case study game-jam-style game development process (performed over only a few days!) making heavy use of available GenAI tools (as of October 2024) to create a game called Plunderwater: Sunken Treasure, a title selected from among GenAI suggestions. We share our impressions of what worked well and what could use improvement, and hope that this paper will serve as a guide for GenAI tool developers to focus on the highest impact future improvements and as a starting point for future GenAI for game development benchmarks.