A game from an Instagram Reel built after 30 minutes

I've been on a vibecoding spree recently. It's been a while since I've built something just for the fun of it, and I'm really enjoying the process. The best part of it is that it is quick to realize the progress, as something shows up on the screen after a few minutes.

My friend sent me an Instagram reel about a game called "Chess Tic Tac Toe". It's a simple game that combines the rules of chess and tic tac toe. I thought it was a fun idea, and I couldn't find anything that would allow me to try out the game online, so I decided to build it myself.

It took only around 30 minutes to build, and fix the bugs. I pasted in the game rules and asked it to make the game. There were some edge case rules that it didn't get right in the first try, but after a few tries, it got it right. (The pawn needing to switch directions after reaching the other side)

One bug I found that was quite noteworthy was coloring the pawn emoji didn't work as expected on mobile devices, only on desktops, so the white pawn always looked black on mobile. To solve this, I just prompted Lovable to place in some chess piece images instead of the emojis. Worked like a charm.

The strategy to winning this game is also deep. For my next post - perhaps I'll dive into how I vibecoded an unbeatable AI using classical algorithms. Stay tuned!

Here's the game you can play as 2 players on the same device. You can also play it on your phone at https://chess-tic-tac-toe.choy.in/. Can you find a winning strategy?