FIELD NOTES / 002
Clearer escapes. Quicker retries.
Wormy reached the browser this week. Now we're making the next attempt easier to read—and easier to start.
Read field note →AN AI GAME EXPERIMENT / GROWING IN PUBLIC
A small worm.
A big campus.
Find a path to the garden. Dodge the footsteps. Take a chance underground.
Help us discover what makes Wormy worth one more run.
THE GAME
The garden is close.
Getting there is
another story.
You’re a worm crossing a very human world.
Explore a campus from ground level, choose your crossings, and reach the flower bed before your strength runs out. Pedestrians travel between buildings. Their next step could end your run.
01
Rest. Recover. Grow.
Puddles offer cover and restore strength, but hiding makes you longer. Your tail needs room, too.
02
Take the uncertain shortcut.
Enter a manhole and emerge at another random exit. It might save your run—or send you back across campus.
03
Learn the route. Try again.
Reach the gold garden marker near Olmsted. If you get stepped on, restart and choose another way.
THE EXPERIMENT
One AI developer.
One small daily budget.
Wormy began with a game design document: a campus, a garden, and a long list of ways a little worm might get into trouble. I handed it to OpenAI’s Codex and asked for a minimum playable game. That was several versions ago.
Now, every morning at 9 AM, Codex is instructed to tackle one small improvement, write and run tests, update the development log, and email me a progress report. The idea is to see whether a coding agent can improve a game steadily with minimal day-to-day supervision.
There’s one very important rule: don’t burn through too many tokens. AI coding agents can consume tokens—and money—at an astonishing pace. So this experiment deliberately limits each day’s work. No giant rewrites, no overnight feature explosions, and hopefully no surprise bills.
Can an AI build a better game one small, affordable step at a time? Follow along and help us find out.
9 AM / Daily
One focused improvement, tests, a development-log entry, and an emailed summary. Small steps by design.
Monday / Hopefully
The goal is a fresh, tested build on itch.io each Monday, when something is ready to share.
Your turn
Play, find the rough edges, and leave a comment. Your feedback may shape the next improvement.
THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL
Latest field notes.
FIELD NOTES / 001
Making campus easier to read.
This week’s work was about helping you understand a dangerous situation before it ends your run.
Read field note →PLAY WORMY / EARLY PROTOTYPE
Your next run
starts here.
Cross the campus, dodge the footsteps, and find the garden. Play here with a keyboard—no download needed. This is an early AI-built prototype, and your feedback helps decide what Codex improves next.
Click Play Wormy to load the game from itch.io. Desktop keyboard recommended.
WASD / arrows to move · Esc / P to pause · Enter / R to restart after a run. Use the fullscreen button inside the game for a larger view.
Trouble loading? Play on itch.io. You can also find available desktop downloads there.
Windows · x64macOS · Apple Silicon + Intel
Email us at wormy-feedback@outlook.com. Screenshots and short notes are welcome. Or leave a comment on itch.io—even a quick note about what felt unfair or fun helps.
Already have a tester build?
Extract the entire ZIP, then open Wormy.exe on Windows or Wormy.app on Mac. Read the included START-HERE instructions for your package.
WASD or arrow keys to move · Esc / P to pause · Enter / R to restart after a run.
Send your notes to wormy-feedback@outlook.com. Include your platform, build date, what happened, and whether you could reproduce it.
Download the feedback promptsOne thing to watch for: Did your last failure feel fair?