What is this? Why does it exist?
Hello! Yes it's me, the person who made Chibi Guesser who may or may not remain anonymous, I'll see how I feel about tying my identity to this project.
As for what it is and why it exists and why it's called Chibi Guesser instead of Trickcadle, I'll answer those in reverse order.
First for why it's called Chibi Guesser instead of Trickcadle, I just thought Chibi Guesser rolled off the tongue a lot easier than Trickcadle.
Trickcadle sounded cute but I also wanted to include the word chibi in some way so Chibi Guesser it was.
Secondly for why it exists, this is a big question involving some mixed answers so if you aren't interested in reading an essay about myself that has nothing to do with Trickcal or the guesser game then you can safely skip over the rest of this pop-up and return to the guesser game.
Why does it exist?
I'm a person who has been very passionate about learning code and videogame design for well over ten years, I began making custom maps for Team Fortress 2 at around age 13;
I made mods in lua for a game I will not name since it would instantly reveal my online persona at around age 14-15 and similarly I found a lot of success in making mods for other games,
cumulating in a mod with nearly 100,000 downloads and is the most popular mod for the game it's in.
I am now working on an actual videogame in C# that I'm hoping to release at some point but I'm not here to advertise, the point I'm trying to get across is for my entire life since childhood I've been incredibly passionate and excited to
to learn how to write code, work on videogames, how to make good games and how software ticks.
I've dedicated over a decade of my life learning how to write code by myself just so I can make videogames I love.
I was excited, passionate, yearning to finally come of age and put the skills I spent over a decade learning to use in the job market.
I couldn't wait to program and write code, write software, do so many things with code I was genuinely passionate about.
And then AI happened.
At first it wasn't that big a deal but as the technology improved I felt more and more redundant, those ten years I spent learning how to write in multiple different languages now felt like it just didn't matter.
Being able to write and understand code no longer became an impressive thing because now everyone can just "get the AI to do it" and everyone who already has a job in IT kept telling me the market is just getting smaller and smaller after the mass adoption of AI and that nobody is hiring.
Outside of my game design skills I felt like I genuinely wasted those ten years and without getting into specific detail it left me in a slump.
I felt genuinely useless, I still do feel genuinely useless, what did I spend those ten years learning for?
Am I just supposed to abandon my passion, the thing I loved and never wanted to stray away from?
I'm autistic so goodluck with that happening, trying to get me to be passionate over something that isn't inside the realm of my autistic interest is like asking a boulder to fly on its own, it's just not happening.
So then what, I'm passionate about software and game design but nobody wants programmers anymore? Where does that leave me?
I genuinely didn't know, I felt like I had a dream in mind I wanted to achieve that the world no longer cared about letting exist.
How am I supposed to express my autistic passion for programming and game design when programmer jobs no longer exist? I still need to feed myself which means I need a source of income somehow.
I was lost in this state for a good year or so, I periodically worked on my personal projects but otherwise had no idea what to do with my life.
This continued until somewhat recently as of writing this when I had a discussion with some people in twitch chat of all places about AI had affected my life and how hopeless it made me feel.
I expressed my despair over my lack of a future and feeling like I have no idea where to go until I was reminded of something.
AI has zero design skills.
You can tell an AI to create a game or a website or anything else and it will most likely *technically* complete the task, but by god it will be so medicore and uninspired that nobody would want to touch it.
Seriously, go tell your favourite AI right now (preferably a chinese one since they're dirt-cheap to run API calls for) and tell it to make something.
It will most likely *technically* complete the goal but it will not have any sort of vision.
AI at its core is very fancy auto-complete, it doesn't magically know what you want, how to specifically design something, what future requirements need to be met and what mindset to autocomplete around.
It just fills in the most likely answer.
AI changed programming from a half-implementation/half-design problem into being almost entirely a design problem.
I still strongly recommend writing software critical files by hand but otherwise put that clanker to work doing things that don't need to be implemented under specific rules.
And sure while you're at it get the AI to scan for bugs in the code, get it to scan for possible code optimisations, get it to fix any arbitrary tech problem you have if you just can't be assed and it isn't something you'll be using in the long-term.
I would kill to have entered the workforce in a world where AI doesn't exist at all but unfortunately I can't change the passing of an age.
The IT field evolved so fast only a single generation got to experience working in it before the machines started improving themselves.
A lot of people were scared AI would become super intelligent and take over the world but the AI we have now just calls our hypothesis trash and the parameters we gave it trash. (kudos if you get the reference!)
All this to say that I think I've finally come to terms with the existence of AI, I don't think AI itself creates slop, rather AI itself allows people to shovel poorly designed projects out a lot faster.
If you don't take the time to design something properly then you can't get anything of good value.
So back to the original question, why does Chibi Guesser exist?
I can give the simple answer and say I love these squeezy squishy little cheeks (Leets is my favourite girl!) but there's also another answer aside from that.
I was curious, do I or does anyone genuinely care if something is written by AI if the end product is still the same as if it was written by a human?
I'll be upfront saying this, I am competent at writing code on my own but if I can get DeepSeek to handle the bulk of the implementation work for me in 1/20th the time it would've taken me to write by hand, I'll have it do the work for me.
And that's exactly what I did, all the design work of the site was me.
The layout, the visual design, the words written on the webpage and how the game plays is all designed by me. (Obviously with inspiration from other Worlde-like games since this is not an original concept lol)
All of the html, javascript and css, in other words all of the implementation work was handled by DeepSeek with only occasional touch-ups & fixes by me.
I was genuinely enthusiastic to learn a new language (javascript, I'm used to writing locally run software) and implement this all by hand but why bother if the clanker just does it anyways?
I find myself at a crossroads in my life still despite this revelation.
I want to learn new languages and new practices but it feels so meaningless when the clanker writes the exact same thing I was planning to write, even if lower quality, at twenty times the speed I can.
I still feel lost about my future admittedly but the reality is I just can't see any company in the year 2026 allowing their coders to write by hand unless it's some extremely implementation-sensitive software. (I mean I say that but even the linux kernal has been using AI to write improvements so I guess not lol)
I would've loved to live in a world where writing by hand is employment-compatible but it feels like we just don't live in that world anymore.
So if my employers don't care about whether the code was written by human or by machine, why should I?
I genuinely enjoy writing code by hand, understanding complex systems and I guess I have an advantage over most entirely vibe coders because I actually understand the code the machine is writing and can tell when it's good, bad, good for a project or incompatible with a project's long-term goals.
I want to find work but it feels like getting into work is entirely a self-advertisement issue which I've always struggled at. (Seriously, I barely even advertised the items I was telling when I was a frequent Team Fortress 2 trader lol) I am awful at self-advertising which is probably career suicide in this modern world.
I'd rather my work be able to speak for me since I feel like speaking about your work is failing to create work that can speak for itself; in the sense that you feel the need to puff-out your chest and make your own projects look better than they can present themselves, as just to make yourself look better.
Well I guess only the last question is left now which is what Chibi Guesser is, I think I already answered that with everything else I've written.
Chibi Guesser is a fun game where you try to find a certain apostle each day, that's about it.
Thanks for reading!