I had almost no programming experience, but wanted to see if I could build a real game with AI assistance. Here's what I built and how I did it.
🎮 Play it here: https://syg737usa.itch.io/memory-game
What I Built
A classic Memory (Concentration) card game featuring:
- Full 52-card deck with real card images
- CPU opponent with 5 difficulty levels (Level 5 is beatable but challenging!)
- 12 languages supported (English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and more)
- Runs entirely in the browser – no install needed
Tech Stack
- HTML / CSS / JavaScript (learned from scratch)
- Claude AI (coding assistant)
- GitHub Pages (free hosting)
- Itch.io (game publishing)
The Journey
Starting from nothing
I told Claude "I want to build a concentration card game" and we started from a blank HTML file. Claude explained every piece of code as we went.
Biggest challenge
Cards kept showing only Ace regardless of what was actually flipped. Debugging this with Claude taught me how DOM manipulation actually works in JavaScript.
Making it look good
Upgraded from plain cards to professional card images, added a casino-style dark green felt background, and used Google Fonts (Cinzel + Raleway) for a polished look.
CPU AI
Built a memory-based AI that actually remembers cards it has seen. Higher difficulty = better memory + smarter moves. Level 5 intentionally makes mistakes 22% of the time so humans can still win.
Going live
Learned Git from scratch, pushed to GitHub, enabled GitHub Pages, and published on Itch.io — all in one session.
What I Learned
- You don't need to know everything to build something real
- AI assistance accelerates learning — but you still need to understand the errors
- The gap between "it works locally" and "it works online" is where real learning happens
Please try!
🎮 https://syg737usa.itch.io/memory-game
Feedback welcome — especially on the CPU difficulty balance!