AI Game Buildability
How automatable each game type — and each ingredient — really is.
AI-build difficulty is our own editorial assessment of what today's tools can do — 1 means a generalist with AI tools can ship it, 5 means expert, real-time craft. It measures automatability of the parts, not whether the game is fun. Demand figures are from the MythicLemon Games Catalogue and are banded estimates, not sales.
Read the ranking top-down for the genres AI can't shorten, the ledger for which ingredients resist automation, and the kitchen chart for where the difficulty concentrates.
What AI can build, genre by genre
Each game type's AI-build difficulty — the weighted mean of its feature recipe (1 = trivial, 5 = expert craft). Longer bar = harder for AI.
| Genre | AI-build difficulty (1–5) |
|---|---|
| Visual Novel | 1.8 |
| Interactive Fiction | 1.83 |
| Point & Click | 1.94 |
| Hidden Object | 2.07 |
| Clicker | 2.23 |
| Farming Sim | 2.38 |
| Walking Sim | 2.59 |
| Card Game | 2.62 |
| JRPG | 2.77 |
| Management | 2.8 |
| Colony Sim | 2.83 |
| 2D Platformer | 2.91 |
| Match 3 | 2.93 |
| Tower Defense | 3.12 |
| Metroidvania | 3.12 |
| City Builder | 3.12 |
| Horror | 3.14 |
| Puzzle | 3.17 |
| Deckbuilding | 3.18 |
| Roguelike | 3.25 |
| Survival | 3.38 |
| Action RPG | 3.61 |
| Racing | 3.73 |
| MOBA | 3.82 |
| Immersive Sim | 3.87 |
| Open World | 3.89 |
| Souls-like | 3.89 |
| FPS | 3.93 |
| Fighting | 4.09 |
| Battle Royale | 4.17 |
The 45 ingredients, ranked by AI-build difficulty
Every feature a game is assembled from, scored 1 (AI does it near end-to-end) to 5 (expert, real-time craft).
| Feature | AI-build difficulty (1–5) |
|---|---|
| 2D backgrounds | 1 |
| Concept & marketing art | 1 |
| Flavor text | 1 |
| Voice acting / VO | 1 |
| 2D illustration | 2 |
| Ambient / soundscapes | 2 |
| Branching dialogue | 2 |
| In-house tools | 2 |
| Inventory / crafting | 2 |
| Localization | 2 |
| Music | 2 |
| PBR texturing | 2 |
| Pixel art / sprites | 2 |
| Platform integration | 2 |
| Procedural terrain | 2 |
| Procgen systems | 2 |
| SFX | 2 |
| Save / settings / menus | 2 |
| UI / HUD art | 2 |
| Worldbuilding / lore | 2 |
| 3D props | 3 |
| Accessibility | 3 |
| Camera systems | 3 |
| Character controller | 3 |
| Core gameplay loop | 3 |
| Economy / progression | 3 |
| NPC AI | 3 |
| Onboarding / tutorial | 3 |
| Quest design | 3 |
| Rigging | 3 |
| Shaders | 3 |
| VFX / particles | 3 |
| 3D characters | 4 |
| 3D environment art | 4 |
| Adaptive music | 4 |
| Backend / live-ops | 4 |
| Combat system | 4 |
| Encounter balance | 4 |
| Level design | 4 |
| Performance optimization | 4 |
| Puzzle design | 4 |
| QA / balancing | 4 |
| Skeletal animation | 4 |
| Game feel / juice | 5 |
| Netcode (real-time) | 5 |
Where the difficulty lives: the five kitchens
Average AI-build difficulty of the features in each discipline. Generation (audio, art) is near-solved; feel and production are not.
| Discipline | Avg AI-build difficulty (1–5) |
|---|---|
| Audio | 2.2 |
| Art / visual | 2.57 |
| Narrative / writing | 2.78 |
| Code / systems | 3 |
| Polish / feel | 3.75 |
Momentum: share of each genre released since 2023
How much of each genre's catalogue is recent. High momentum = a live, growing audience, not a legacy one.
| Genre | % of titles released 2023+ |
|---|---|
| Visual Novel | 37 |
| Interactive Fiction | 48.2 |
| Point & Click | 36.6 |
| Hidden Object | 45 |
| Clicker | 47.1 |
| Farming Sim | 59.4 |
| Walking Sim | 50.5 |
| Card Game | 45.2 |
| JRPG | 35.6 |
| Management | 45.2 |
| Colony Sim | 49.9 |
| 2D Platformer | 46.7 |
| Match 3 | 28.3 |
| Tower Defense | 44 |
| Metroidvania | 37.4 |
| City Builder | 47.3 |
| Horror | 43.4 |
| Puzzle | 35.6 |
| Deckbuilding | 64.4 |
| Roguelike | 45.1 |
| Survival | 39.8 |
| Action RPG | 48.1 |
| Racing | 31.7 |
| MOBA | 28.1 |
| Immersive Sim | 60.7 |
| Open World | 36.2 |
| Souls-like | 49 |
| FPS | 36.2 |
| Fighting | 17.5 |
| Battle Royale | 36.1 |
About these numbers
Drawn from the MythicLemon Marketplace Index and recomputed each reporting period. Full methodology →