🎃 Nightmellow – Built a Halloween Game With Kiro

Source: Dev.to

How Kiro Helped Bring Nightmellow to Life

Kiro became my coding partner throughout development. I used two complementary approaches:

Spec‑Driven Development

• Character abilities
• Transformation rules
• Physics
• Platforms
• Movements
• Goal
• Scene flow and interactions

Kiro used these specs as a blueprint, generating consistent, organized code for major features and keeping the project stable as it grew.

Incremental Improvements

For smaller improvements—like fixing animations, tuning movement, or adjusting interactions—I chatted naturally with Kiro.

Using MCP to Automate Testing

I extended Kiro with the Puppeteer MCP server, which let Kiro:

• Load and play my game
• Click buttons
• Capture screenshots
• Evaluate behavior automatically

This removed a lot of repetitive manual testing and helped me fix issues quickly.

Visuals & Audio

Most custom visuals (logos, chibi mascot, UI, tiles, layers) were generated using ChatGPT Go.

What I Learned

Working with Kiro taught me how to:

• Use specs to stay organized
• Use vibe coding for creative iteration
• Use MCP to automate repetitive tasks
• Blend AI‑generated assets with my own ideas
• Build faster while keeping the project clean and structured

Final Result

Nightmellow became a full Halloween adventure featuring:

• Three transformable forms with unique behaviors
• Water‑floating mechanics
• Enemy interactions
• Checkpoints and resurrection screens
• Parallax backgrounds
• A cute chibi character as the mascot

Kiro helped me turn an idea into a complete, polished Halloween game far faster than I could have on my own.