Side Projects in the AI Era: The Ponzi Potato Story
In 2011 I wrote my bachelor thesis about why video games matter. In 2014 I sketched a game called Save Me. It never left the sketchbook. Since then I've built secret sharing tools, file transfer tools, websites and way too many side projects - but never an actual game.
Fifteen years later, it finally happened. It's about potatoes. Of course it is.
Blame Universal Paperclips
If you've never played Universal Paperclips: don't. Or do, but clear your afternoon first. You start by clicking a button to make a single paperclip. A few hours later you're turning the entire universe into paperclips. It's mostly numbers and buttons, and it's one of the best games I know.
What got me is how much story you can tell with almost nothing. No graphics, no characters - just a number that keeps going up, and a growing feeling that maybe this isn't a great idea.
I always wanted to build something like that. I just needed something to replace the paperclips.
Plant a potato, build an empire
Ponzi Potato starts with one button: Plant potato. It grows for 12 seconds and turns into 2-5 potatoes. Plant those. Harvest. Repeat.
Soon you're running a business. Then come the machines, more land, fries, chips and vodka (obviously). Then bioplastic, potato power, potato futures and a quantum computer. In the end, the universe is one big potato field. Sorry, universe.
And then there's the pyramid. Every incremental game is a bit of a pyramid scheme anyway: you invest now so the numbers go up later. So why not make it official? Invite friends, they invite friends, everybody "earns". There's a Ponzi fund called Spud Capital that takes all your cash. You can even rent friends on the black market if you don't have enough real ones.
The best part: the pyramid only ever pays in potatoes. Nothing on the site is an investment. Nobody gets hurt, except maybe your productivity.
Just an experiment
Full disclosure: there's no business plan. Ponzi Potato is an experiment, and the main goal was to learn something new.
Building a game is surprisingly different from building a product. In a product, you try to make things easy. In a game, you make things just hard enough. How long should the first upgrade take? When does waiting get boring? How fast can a number grow before it stops meaning anything? I spent more time tweaking timers and prices than writing features. I even ended up building a little simulator, just to see if a player would get stuck somewhere around the vodka stage.
Also new for me: keeping cheaters out. The game runs in your browser, but the server replays everything you do and has the final word. Editing your local save does nothing. Sorry.
The AI did the heavy lifting
Here's the honest part: I didn't write most of the code. AI did.
I was the game designer, the product owner and the annoying tester. I said things like "the golden potato should feel more golden" and "the press cameras need to flash all at once". The AI wrote the code, I played, complained, and we went again.
The whole thing took about a week, and around 180 commits. A few years ago, a game like this would have been a "maybe one day" project for me. Probably right next to Save Me.
Does that make it less mine? I don't think so. The ideas, the bad jokes and the potato puns are all mine. The AI just did the typing (a lot of it).
Because I can
Honestly, that's the real reason. Because I can, and because it's fun.
Side projects are play. Nobody asked for a potato pyramid scheme. There are no deadlines and no stakeholders - just me, a stupid idea and a free weekend. Or seven.
What's next?
No idea. Maybe more stages, maybe a mobile version, maybe nothing. Right now I'm just happy it exists.
Go plant a potato at ponzipotato.com and tell me how far you get. I'd be happy for ideas, feedback and bug reports. Or just recruit me into your pyramid :)
Best, Chris
