At the end of 2020, I joined an exciting new project. At the time, it was called IMC—an RTS card battler game. The team was small, and I was one of the three developers working on it. I started by working on small features, but I soon found that the code was poorly architected. The team was great, and I was happy to be part of the project. After some time, I was tasked with improving the underlying code architecture.
As time went on, more people joined the team and the project grew. Junior programmers, talented artists, and VFX specialists joined the team. The music was even composed by the original artist from Subnautica. It was a significant project and a true dream team.
Around April 2024, after about two years of work, the project was halted due to a lack of funding.
I was sad to see it go, but I remained proud of what we achieved. As time passed, I often looked back at the project and what could have been.
Fast-forward to March 2026: with the advancements in AI, the project owner contacted me. Knowing I had been on the team for a long time and possessed deep knowledge of the project, he wanted to restart development. He wanted to take advantage of AI to streamline the process. I proposed using Claude Code Max and provided an estimate for tackling the technical debt. The estimate was around nine months, and I suggested adding a 20% buffer. He agreed, and development resumed in March 2026.
Fast-forward to June 2026. After three months of work, the project was stopped once again, this time for the owner’s personal reasons.
So, here we are again—back on the road to the future…