Galactic Front: A Retro Arcade Shooter Built with AI Ambition
Funatic Games, the indie studio founded by veteran developer Paul Goad, is boldly going where few indies have gone before, into the heart of 80s arcade nostalgia, using 21st-century AI tools.
Galactic Front, a browser-based HTML game inspired by the iconic Defender, challenges players to blast through 99 levels of escalating chaos. It's pure arcade bliss: dodge asteroids, shoot down enemy ships that drop alien invaders, and rescue stranded astronauts, all in a race for the highest score on a global leaderboard.
“Galactic Front is a Defender-inspired HTML Web Game,” Goad explains. “Rescue astronauts, kill aliens and enemy spaceships, all while dodging space asteroids. Compete online for the highest score while playing all 99 levels.”
If that sounds delightfully old school, that’s because it is, intentionally so. The game leans heavily into pixel art and the gameplay ethos of its era. But under the hood, Galactic Front represents something very new: it’s Goad’s first fully AI-assisted development project, powered by ChatGPT.
“The goal wasn’t to set Galactic Front apart from other retro shooters,” Goad says. “It was to challenge myself to create a core game loop using AI.”
The development process was an experiment in back-and-forth iteration: prompting ChatGPT, copy-pasting into Visual Studio, testing, and repeating. While the game’s loop is simple by design, it’s a milestone in exploring how generative AI can empower solo developers to build and refine playable prototypes at lightning speed.
“ChatGPT was used primarily for coding,” Goad says. “It was a cut-and-paste endeavor going back and forth between ChatGPT and Visual Studio.”
True to its retro roots, Galactic Front embraces 80s pixel art and a classic side-scrolling format. But don’t let the minimalism fool you, each level ramps up in both enemy aggression and raw speed, putting twitch reflexes to the test.
The game will be playable soon on the Funatic Games website, with no download required. It's designed for pick-up-and-play immediacy, just like the arcade classics it honors.
Initial reactions have been mixed, especially from industry voices still grappling with the role of AI in game development. Goad isn’t surprised.
“There’s still a very polarized sentiment on the use of AI in the games industry,” he acknowledges. “But for me, AI will inevitably be part of everyone’s development pipeline. I’m hoping to be at the forefront of this exciting technology.”
That forward-looking mindset is already shaping what’s next. Goad points to “agentic workflows”, a more autonomous, multi-step form of AI logic, as the next frontier in AI-powered development. For Funatic Games, it’s a signal that more advanced titles are coming soon.
“Agentic workflows are now a part of everyone’s AI development pipeline,” he says. “This will only allow Funatic Games to develop much more advanced games in the future.”
For now, Galactic Front is proof of concept made playable, a retro resurrection delivered by modern methods. It’s a game that lets you blast aliens while also thinking about the future of how games get made. And that’s a frontier worth exploring.
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