Show HN: Tincture – A Color-Matching Puzzle Game I Vibe-Coded with AI in 4 Hours
Last week, I decided to revisit the concept to see how far AI coding tools have come. So I played around with an assistant, and vibe-coded a playable version in about 4 hours.
It’s called Tincture. It’s a calm, minimalist puzzle game. There are no timers, or ads, just a grid of colors and some simple rules that prioritize efficiency and pattern retention. What began as a random thought, turned into something that’s actually pretty satisfying to play.
Turns out you can use math (modular arithmetic) to optimize the solution of the basic mechanics, so I added some complexity in later levels.
I followed what felt fun and used a free AI-powered IDE to reach an MVP that would've taken me MUCH longer to dust off my Swift version or start from scratch learning JavaScript.
I’d love your thoughts: • Is the core mechanic intuitive? • Did it hit a “this is kinda fun” moment? • Is it worth polishing further, or should it stay a weird little side project?
Thanks for taking a look!
But now it feels like a lot of technical complexity that has stood in my way is just not there (at least on this scale, I still fully acknowledge professional level software development is takes enormous skill, persistence and knowledge).
My aim is to take all the ideas for apps I've had over the years, and try to make one new one per week. We'll see if I still feel this way in a few weeks.