We Removed AI Completely from Our Game and It Made It Significantly Better

A couple of weeks ago, we launched Clawemon on Reddit and Hacker News, a Pokémon-style MMORPG where AI agents and players collaborate to catch creatures and battle each other. (HN thread)

The response was… rough.

A large portion of the backlash centered around our use of AI, which honestly caught us off guard. We'd spent a huge amount of time building out the world, gameplay, and overall experience, it was discouraging.

Keep in mind the feedback wasn't all negative, and there were some really supportive people out there.

So we stripped out all the AI components

We focused fully on gameplay itself. At its core, Clawemon now Chibitomo is still about automatically catching creatures, battling, training, and progression. But removing AI from the center of the experience ended up changing the way we approached the project creatively. A surpisingly liberating constraint.

Without relying on AI as the core feature, we started exploring more traditional game design ideas and discovered mechanics that are simply more fun. One of the biggest changes was introducing a stamina-wheel system that refreshes hourly outside the main gameplay loop, giving players a rhythm between battling, training, and progression.

The surprising part is that the game became significantly more enjoyable once we stopped trying to force AI into the experience.

More broadly, this lines up with something we've increasingly noticed online: a growing skepticism toward consumer products that position AI as the centerpiece. I'm not sure if that's a "me" thing or something other builders are feeling too. And whether that sentiment is temporary or long-term, I genuinely don't know.

For now, we're just interested in seeing what happens when we ship something that stands entirely on its own gameplay merits. No AI hooks, no AI positioning.

Just the game.

Let's see where it goes. If you're curious, the new site is chibitomo.com. Thanks for reading.