Introduction to AI Tools for Game Developers
On this page
A talk for the AI Game Hackathon 2025, hosted by Hackathonat, and the first Cursor Saudi event we ran entirely online — which turned out to matter more than we expected for reach beyond Riyadh.
The audience were about to build games against a clock. What they needed wasn’t a deep dive into any one tool, it was a map: what exists, what each category is for, and which one to open first.
What changed in 2025
AI tooling stopped being a novelty and became infrastructure. The interesting part isn’t that experts got faster — it’s that the floor moved. A beginner with these tools is now competitive with an intermediate developer without them, and that’s a different kind of shift.
The coding tools, compared honestly
| Tool | Shape | Why you'd pick it |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot | Multi-IDE plugin | Works in VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim. Deep GitHub integration, battle-tested at scale. |
| Windsurf | Agent-first IDE | Strong autonomous execution and multi-file reasoning. |
| Cline | Open-source extension | Free, fully customisable, bring your own API keys. |
| Cursor | AI-native IDE | Large context handling, and Tab + Chat + Agent as one toolkit. |
What I’d tell someone starting a jam tomorrow
Use the tools to move fast on the parts that aren’t the game — scaffolding, boilerplate, the config nobody enjoys writing, the asset pipeline glue. Keep your own hands on the part that makes it good, which is the design.
The tools are very good at the repetitive scaffolding a codebase accumulates. They are not a substitute for taste, and in a jam, taste is the only thing being judged.
Thanks to Hackathonat for having me.
Mazen Alotaibi (@ma7dev)