Developer Wins $25,000 for Game Written Almost Entirely by Claude Code

A developer known online as Leo Cooout took the top prize at the Vibe Jam 2026 contest with a game whose code, graphics, music and 3D models were almost entirely generated by artificial intelligence. The game about capybaras delivering food was built in two weeks, and for most of that time its creator didn't write a single line of code by hand.

A Capybara Instead of a Programmer

The game is called A Game About Capybaras Delivering Food. Players control a scooter-riding capybara that collects and delivers stacked food orders before time runs out. You have to balance your cargo while riding, use the built-in navigation, and avoid sharp turns so the food doesn't spill.

The game features multiplayer mode, custom level-editing tools, original music, 3D models, textures and illustrations, plus a sprawling open city that can be explored solo or with friends. All of it came out of a single project built mainly through prompts directed at the AI model rather than manual coding.

Working with Multiple AI Sessions at Once

The game's creator described his workflow in some detail. Instead of writing code, he spent most of his time planning features, testing gameplay and making design decisions, leaving the actual code generation to the model.

The game was entirely vibe-coded. In practice I spent most of my time brainstorming, planning and playing, not generating code. I ran 2-3 Claude Code sessions at once, each working on a different part of the codebase to avoid conflicts - Leo Cooout, the game's creator

The developer explained that he always assigned new features to a fresh session with no prior context, while keeping one long-running session specifically for fixing bugs that required familiarity with already-built code. This division of labor let him develop different parts of the game in parallel without changes clashing with each other.

A Contest That Measures AI Coding Progress

Vibe Jam is organized by Dutch entrepreneur Pieter Levels, known online as levelsio. The 2026 edition was sponsored by Cursor as the main partner, along with Bolt.new, Glif and Tripo AI. The rules required that at least 90 percent of each submitted game's code be created with AI involvement, that the game run in a browser without login and without long load times, and multiplayer mode was encouraged though not required.

The organizer himself treats the contest as a kind of benchmark for AI-based coding tools, letting him compare each year how much the quality of generated code and graphics has improved.

It'll be interesting to see the difference in quality compared to last year, Vibe Jam could be a fun benchmark for AI coding - Pieter Levels, organizer of Vibe Jam

Second place and $10,000 went to Fanto's Mega-Mart, made by a developer known as e_c_t_o, while third place, worth $5,000, went to WenWare, created by a developer going by underpaid_mom.

What This Means for Game Developers and Programmers

The Vibe Jam 2026 result shows that agentic coding tools like Claude Code can independently carry a complex project, complete with graphics, sound and online mode, through to completion, as long as someone oversees the process and makes the design decisions. For indie game developers, this means the barrier to entry posed by coding skill keeps dropping, though the creative, planning and testing work still falls to humans.

For Polish game studios and freelancers following tools like Cursor or Claude Code, the contest's outcome is concrete evidence of how quickly the scale of projects a single person can complete in a short time is growing. A threefold increase in the prize pool between the 2025 and 2026 editions also suggests that interest in this kind of contest is growing alongside the capabilities of the models themselves.

Organizers haven't yet announced details of the next edition, but the growing number of entries, nearly a thousand games in this year's round, suggests Vibe Jam has become a fixture on the AI and game dev industry calendar.

Sources: An iOS Developer Vibe-Coded A Capybara Food Delivery Game (wccftech.com), Press Release Vibe Jam 2026 (vibej.am), results announcement on levelsio's profile (x.com)