GNARGNARHEAD // WHACKER

Autopsy Page [WIP] / Public Artifact / On Ice

Whacker

This page is a WIP. The game is a playable unfinished build: rooted in a QBasic version I made at 16, rebuilt over about a week of full-time work with GPT-5.2, then left on ice as a strange but alive artifact.

Page: WIP Game: Playable Status: On Ice Build: ~1 Week Model: GPT-5.2

This is not a sales page. It is a draft autopsy page for a game I am putting out unfinished.

The game already has functional AI, a skills development system, and the start of a story, plus the magical-girl UI sensibility, sound, and character work that made me want to put it up at all.

Open Repo Back to Projects
Archive Build Shot
Archived Whacker gameplay screenshot showing the match field, score, speed, and spin HUD.
Old development capture kept for documentary value, not current promo use.

Cause of Death

I do not really play Pong.

I have mostly played Pong while making Pongs. That meant Whacker could keep getting richer without ever getting the kind of grounded player-feedback loop that would let me say, with confidence, whether the core game was actually great or just very compelling to build.

What Exists Right Now

It is more than a concept stub.

  • There is functional AI in the game right now.
  • There is a skills development system in the game right now.
  • There is the start of a story, not just menu dressing.
  • It plays well to me, even if I am not the ideal judge.
  • The characters look great.
  • The magical-girl UI direction rules.
  • The sounds are appealing to me.
  • The whole thing feels more specific than it should.

Build Method

Fast organs, unclear prognosis.

This version was built fully with GPT-5.2 over about a week of full-time development. The AI is not a side note here. It is part of the method and part of the reason the project could accumulate so many systems so quickly.

Why Release It Anyway

Because there is still something there.

I am putting it out as an unfinished public artifact, not as a polished statement. The repo is messy on purpose: code, art, story packs, tests, lock docs, screenshots, and process residue all live together because the mess is part of what this thing is.

What Survived the Cut

Characters and aesthetic did real work.

Even unfinished, the visual identity and character layer are some of the most convincing parts of the whole object.

Aya

Aya Villanueva portrait art from Whacker.

Kai

Kai Alvarez portrait art from Whacker.

Benji

Benji Santos portrait art from Whacker.

Tix

Tino Tix Ramos portrait art from Whacker.

Development Archive

Old screenshots are evidence, not ad copy.

The root-level screenshot files in the repo are archived development captures. They stay useful here because this page is about the build history, not about pretending the game is a polished, current thing.

Archive Shot

Core match read

Archived Whacker gameplay screenshot showing the playfield and HUD.

The strongest old shot for communicating the basic match layer: score, speed, spin, field, and the game’s UI attitude.

Archive Shot

Story layer

Archived Whacker story screenshot showing text-forward narrative UI over the game field.

Useful because it proves the game stopped being just a duel sim and started turning into a text-forward campaign object.

Original Organism

There was a QBasic Whacker first.

The original version existed when I was 16. This build is not a clean restoration of that game. It is more like reviving the name and then letting it mutate into something much bigger, stranger, and less containable.