Juggernaut is a forthcoming free-to-play boomer shooter clearly styled after Wolfenstein engine FPSes of yore. It’s about shooting huge waves of zombies in flat, pixellated arenas. As far as modern retro shooters go it looks unremarkable, though it will be released alongside the Juggernaut Assets Maker, a paid tool for making your own levels and adding your own assets. “Make it more Japanese” the Steam page promises. “Make it sexier”.
It’s the work of Mages Inc, a Japanese studio best known for the Steins;Gate series of visual novels; it has also worked on recent iterations of the Corpse Party series. Mages Inc generally specialises in visual novels, though it has released at least one Xbox 360 action game that was never released outside of Japan.
But to what extent Mages Inc can actually be credited (or blamed) for their first foray into the first-person shooter genre is ripe for debate, because here’s Juggernaut’s AI Disclosure:
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AI Breakdown
Source code: 100%
Graphics: 60%
Sound: 50%
Effects: 100%
In other words, this FPS is entirely vibe-coded, and its assets are overwhelmingly the work of generative AI. The Juggernaut Asset Maker, which will cost money, carries a similar disclosure: “The source code for this application was generated using generative AI”.
Mages Inc isn’t the best known studio in the world, but it’s been around for over 20 years and has issued a handful of games that most enthusiasts would have heard of. Steins;Gate has nearly 6,000 “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on Steam; the recent Steins;Gate Re:Boot, which was released on August 20, already has nearly 600 “very positive” reviews.
So it’s surprising how heavily they’re leaning into generative AI with Juggernaut. Some Steam users have taken to the Juggernaut discussions board to air their grievances: “If you don’t care enough to make a game why should I care enough to buy it?” one user asks.
Games with AI disclosures count for nearly half of all games released on Steam every week, though few are as upfront as Mages Inc has been with its loose stats-driven approach. Games that are (or appear to be) predominantly the result of generative AI are generally all but invisible to Steam’s discovery algorithms, especially the recent wave of similar-looking incremental games. Is this the first completely vibe-coded game from a renowned studio?
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