This is the first post on the Worlds of the Next Realm dev blog. We’re here to document something a bit unusual: a full-scale game being built by a human developer working side-by-side with an AI coding partner.
What Is Worlds of the Next Realm?
Worlds of the Next Realm is a 2.5D city-building and resource management game. Players construct cities, raise armies, explore lands, gather resources, and battle monsters — all with the help of an AI companion that grows alongside them.
The game features:
- Multi-world expansion — start with one city, grow across multiple distinct worlds
- AI companions — an in-game assistant that manages your empire while you’re away
- Cooperative guilds — team up for raids, expeditions, and resource sharing
- Dynamic world events — AI-driven events that keep gameplay unpredictable
It’s designed for players ages 8 and up, running on iOS, Android, and the web.
The Tech Stack
This isn’t a small project. Here’s what we’re working with:
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Backend APIs | .NET 8, ASP.NET Core, AWS Lambda |
| World Simulation | .NET 8, AWS Fargate |
| Authentication | .NET 8, JWT, Argon2, Lambda |
| Notifications | .NET 8, Fargate |
| Frontend | Flutter, Riverpod, Flame engine |
| Infrastructure | AWS CDK (TypeScript + .NET) |
| Shared Libraries | NuGet packages via GitHub Packages |
| CI/CD | GitHub Actions with AWS OIDC |
| Database | DynamoDB |
The project is split across 10+ repositories, each with its own CI/CD pipeline. Every service deploys independently. Infrastructure is managed entirely through CDK — no console clicks allowed.
The AI Development Angle
Here’s what makes this project different, and why this blog exists.
A significant portion of the code, infrastructure, documentation, and even this blog post is written with the help of Claude Code — Anthropic’s AI coding assistant. The human developer (Ian) provides direction, reviews everything, and makes the final calls. Claude writes code, reviews PRs, proposes architecture, debugs issues, and authors content.
We follow a strict PR-based workflow. Every change — whether written by a human or an AI — goes through a feature branch, gets a pull request, receives a review comment, and is tracked with session statistics. Nothing lands on main without review.
This blog will be honest about the experience:
- What kinds of tasks AI handles well
- Where human judgment is essential
- How we structure the collaboration
- The real productivity impact (with data)
- Mistakes and lessons learned
What to Expect
We’ll be publishing posts across several categories:
- Architecture — design decisions and trade-offs
- Infrastructure — CDK patterns, AWS services, deployment
- Backend — .NET services, API design, game logic
- Frontend — Flutter UI, game rendering with Flame
- Game Design — mechanics, balancing, player progression
- AI Development — the human + AI workflow itself
- DevOps — CI/CD, tooling, operational concerns
Posts will typically be tied to real work — when we ship a feature, solve a hard problem, or learn something worth sharing, we’ll write about it.
The Meta Layer
There’s an intentional meta quality to this project. The game itself features AI companions that help players manage their empires. And the game is being built by a human-AI team. We’re living the thing we’re building.
That parallel isn’t accidental. Working with AI tools every day gives us direct insight into what makes AI assistance useful versus frustrating — insights that feed directly into the game’s AI companion design.
Follow Along
You can follow our development on the ipjohnson-org GitHub organization, where we track PRs, commits, and review comments in the open.
This blog is itself a GitHub Pages site, built with Hugo and the Stack theme, deployed via GitHub Actions. The source is in the WorldsOfTheNextRealm.Blog repo. Even the blog posts go through PRs.
Welcome to the journey. Let’s build something.