It has been almost four years since OpenAI released ChatGPT, and I was one of its early users.
Since then, AI has been everywhere. Every day, social media is filled with discussions about AI, coding agents, new models, and what they might be capable of next.
Recently, I came across an old game called NetWalk while playing around with a Palm emulator.
That gave me an idea:
What if I tried to recreate this kind of classic puzzle game for iOS, using AI to write all the code?
From that initial idea to having a complete game ready for App Store review, it took just 24 hours.
Yes, 24 hours.
NetWalk is a classic network puzzle game from the 2000s.
The idea is simple: rotate the tiles and connect every computer to the central server, bringing the entire network online.
For this project, I wanted to see how far AI-assisted development could actually go.
So I gave myself a simple rule:
I wouldn’t manually write any of the game code.
All of the code was generated with AI.
My job was mostly describing what I wanted, explaining the game rules, testing the results, finding problems, and asking the AI to fix or improve them.
I still used Xcode to run the simulator, test the game, build the project, archive it, and submit it to Apple.
So this wasn’t really about removing the human from software development.
It was more of an experiment to see whether one person, working with AI, could go from an idea to a real product without manually writing the code.
And it worked.
The other reason I wanted to do this project was to learn the entire iOS publishing process.
That turned out to be almost as interesting as building the game itself.
I had to go through App Store Connect, App Review, privacy declarations, AdMob integration, In-App Purchases, developer agreements, and even some Canadian tax-related requirements.
I originally thought finishing the code meant the project was basically finished.
It turns out…
finishing the code was probably only half of the work. 😅
After around 15 days of dealing with reviews, settings, policies, and a few unexpected issues, it finally happened:
NetWalk Classic is now live on the App Store.
This is the first iOS game I’ve taken all the way from a random idea to a real App Store release using AI to generate the code.
It’s not a huge game.
It’s not technically complicated.
It’s just a small, old-school puzzle game inspired by something I enjoyed from the Palm era.
But that’s also what made this experiment interesting.
Four years ago, it felt amazing when AI could generate a useful piece of code.
Today, I can describe an idea, iterate on it with AI, and have a complete iOS game ready for App Store submission within 24 hours.
That’s a pretty crazy change in just a few years.
If you miss the simple puzzle games and PDA aesthetics of the 2000s, feel free to give it a try.
NetWalk Classic
