Former Co-Founder and CEO and CCO at Nimble Giant. Made Champions of Regnum, Master of Orion (2026) and Quantum League. Up to new things!
Buenos Aires
Joined September 2008
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I gave myself one week of my spare time to see what a game designer with 30 years of experience, but no coding skills, could build using AI.
The result is Marble Marvell, an unofficial and non commercial, free tribute to Marble Madness.
Made in admiration of @cerny, a personal idol, and Bob Flanagan, who made the original 42 years ago.
Try it here: chilkus.itch.io/marble-marve…
#GameDev #AIGameDev #GenerativeAI
Hey @Mike_Matei @yelsraek @GrandPOOBear
I think I’ve made a pretty decent tribute remake of Marble Madness, and I’d love your feedback!
It’s called Marble Marvell, a free, unofficial tribute with keyboard, mouse and analogue gamepad controls, an experimental trackball for mobile devices, and online rankings.
I’ve been tuning it to feel faster, tighter and closer to the original.
I’m currently at the top of the leaderboard… which was easy when I was the only one 😂 Come give it a try, tell me what you think, and knock me off the top!
chilkus.itch.io/marble-marve…
I'm #1 in Marble Marvell.
I'm also the only player on the leaderboard.
My free, unofficial tribute to Marble Madness (1984) now has mouse/gamepad support, mobile support using an (experimental) virtual trackball and online rankings!
Beat my 39,043:
chilkus.itch.io/marble-marve…
#MarbleMadness #AIGameDev
Back from #ExpoEVA and finally got some proper time with Marble Marvell again!
The game now feels much closer to the original—and faster. You can really race, carry momentum through corners and push for better times. The analogue gamepad control rocks, and honestly, the mouse controls feel better than I remember the Amiga version of the original feeling!
There’s also an experimental virtual trackball for mobile: flick to build momentum and hold to brake. I’d love feedback from anyone playing on a phone.
Plus performance improvements, fixes for iOS and macOS, and online rankings for both campaigns. Play first, then sign in with your itch.io account to submit your score.
I’m currently #1 with 39,043 points. Being the only player on the leaderboard probably helped. Someone fix that!
New gameplay video and the challenge:
xitter.cf/Chilkus/status/2114906…
Play my free, unofficial tribute to Marble Madness:
chilkus.itch.io/marble-marve…
#MarbleMadness #MarbleMarvell #RetroGaming #AIGameDev #HighScore
I'm #1 in Marble Marvell.
I'm also the only player on the leaderboard.
My free, unofficial tribute to Marble Madness (1984) now has mouse/gamepad support, mobile support using an (experimental) virtual trackball and online rankings!
Beat my 39,043:
chilkus.itch.io/marble-marve…
#MarbleMadness #AIGameDev
I'm #1 in Marble Marvell.
I'm also the only player on the leaderboard.
My free, unofficial tribute to Marble Madness (1984) now has mouse/gamepad support, mobile support using an (experimental) virtual trackball and online rankings!
Beat my 39,043:
chilkus.itch.io/marble-marve…
#MarbleMadness #AIGameDev
Here's the full run on YouTube if you want to check it out.
youtu.be/kDaZrzJ_iMM
A glorious first place in a field of one. Surely someone can fix that?
#MarbleMadness #Speedrun #HighScore
Andres Chilkowski retweeted
un escándalo el nivel de creatividad en los 170 juegos expuestos en expoeva.com. la mejor expo tech que fui en mi vida. no se la pierdan. peluca totalmente volada por el talento nacional.
Andres Chilkowski retweeted
Storyteller is getting a HUGE update for Steam on November 17
We spent two years working adding pirates, frankenstein, hansel & gretel, a genie and a dragon.
But we also did something reckless: we revised the whole game, start to finish.
store.steampowered.com/news/…
Andres Chilkowski retweeted
🚨HAYAKU Playtest: Request Access Now!🚨
Sign up now on Steam by clicking REQUEST ACCESS!
Starting October 22, you'll be able to explore the island!
store.steampowered.com/app/2…
And for the fastest ones, here are some keys so you can play it right now!
D3JTQ-C0LWV-69P5G
NNL0A-XQEIL-B5EHW
3QITC-R7DQW-C5NJL
J90HC-EEJXG-NYXQD
9ARR6-GEMN2-ZTQ64
The game development sector rebate (20% back on investment by the private sector) in New Zealand has returned 9.75 dollars in taxes for every dollar invested by the government. Revenue more than doubled in 3 years since the program started. Just wow! #nzgdc
Andres Chilkowski retweeted
Masterpiece remake of a 1980s masterpiece.
Only the goal jingle feels off. Should be same note played four times on the end after the three notes.
I gave myself one week of my spare time to see what a game designer with 30 years of experience, but no coding skills, could build using AI.
The result is Marble Marvell, an unofficial and non commercial, free tribute to Marble Madness.
Made in admiration of @cerny, a personal idol, and Bob Flanagan, who made the original 42 years ago.
Try it here: chilkus.itch.io/marble-marve…
#GameDev #AIGameDev #GenerativeAI
@santisairi maybe you can put this up on GamesAreArt?
is this art or is this slop?
But game development isn't just assembling mechanics correctly.
It comes from experience. Taste. Memory. Frustration. Surprise. Knowing when something technically works but somehow feels wrong, and occasionally doing something that shouldn't work at all simply because it feels right.
That's the human experience.
And as long as there's no ghost in the shell, we still have the creative edge.
So when I was finished recreating the original levels, I tried one final experiment.
I gave the AI all the mechanics, enemies, hazards and tools we had built and asked it to design a new campaign by itself.
And it did.
The levels work. They have progression. They have rhythm. The challenges escalate. They're perfectly playable.
And they're... kind of meh.
They have no soul.
And I think that's where this experiment became much more interesting to me.
AI turned out to be extraordinarily capable at building. It could understand my intent, execute ideas, respond to feedback and iterate at a speed that would have seemed completely insane to me a few years ago.
But what surprised me most wasn't the big stuff.
There's an enormous amount of nuance hidden inside a game like Marble Madness. Every enemy has a particular behavior. Every hazard has its own rules. There are little decorations and interactions. Movement needs to feel right. Things need to react in very particular ways.
I was able to communicate most of this verbally, without elaborate prompts or carefully engineered specifications. It felt surprisingly close to sitting next to a really good programmer and saying:
"No, not like that. Try this."
And it understood what I meant.
The resulting game is fun. Of course, it has an enormous advantage: it's based on a truly original masterpiece. It already has a soul.
I chose Marble Madness because I love the game, and for its clear (and brilliant) design and focused scope that made it a great fit for a one-week experiment.
I rebuilt it mostly from memory, using screenshots for reference. For the last level I had to watch a gameplay video, since I never managed to pass it either in the arcade or on the Amiga as a kid.
The experiment honestly blew me away.
I asked the AI for very specific things, and it was able to follow incredibly precise feedback about usability, game feel, mechanics and controls.
I asked for a map editor. It built one.
Over the course of the week, that editor evolved into something that looked like one of the best custom level-editing tools I've seen built at any of the studios I've worked with.
At one point the shadows looked terrible.
"Why are the shadows so pixelated? Can't you implement something like cascade shadow maps?"
"Sure."
Done.
Framerate went down?
No problem. It optimized its own rendering code.
"I want local multiplayer with dynamic split-screen."
Sure.
About 15 minutes later, we had split-screen.
Andres Chilkowski retweeted
NIMBLE GIANT SE INTEGRA A SABER
La empresa de videojuegos argentina Nimble Giant Entertainment se integró con la multinacional Saber. Ahora bajo el nombre de Saber LATAM, tiene la mitad de su personal en Buenos Aires, y más de 3000 empleados en 20 estudios de más de 30 países.
Saber LATAM será la rama latinoamericana de Saber Interactive, que reúne talentos de desarrollo de clase mundial de toda la región. Saber Interactiva colabora en la producción de películas con grandes marcas del mundo del cine como Star Wars y Jurassic Park. Además, su último juego “Space Marine 2” vendió más de 2 millones de unidades.
“El rebranding a Saber LATAM refleja cómo nuestra colaboración con Saber ha madurado hasta convertirse en una visión unificada y una base sólida para lo que viene", dijo Andrés Chilkowski, cofundador y CEO de Nimble Giant.
Nimble Giant produjo 30 videojuegos, incluidos Regnum Online, Champions of Regnum, Bunch of Heroes, Master of Orion y Quantum League.
(+) en Clarín: clar.in/4iwqLJn
Imagen: Space Marine Dos, uno de los videojuegos más populares desarrollados por Saber Interactive.
