Can AI make game dev truly “prompt to play”?
Jack Wakem (Founder, Tempest AI) breaks down how his team is building “Lovable for games” — a consumer platform where anyone can prompt, iterate, and ship, including a timeline that lets you scrub your build like a YouTube video.
Tempest started as an AI-native RPG engine (RAG, context engineering, custom schemas) and evolved into a fast, consumer game-creation workflow. We dig into the hard parts (state, memory, assets), product pivots, and what Jack learned dropping out, working night shifts, and building in public with Build Club (Annie Liao).
What you’ll learn
Why “AI-native games” are hard (context tracking, long-running state) and the pragmatic path that worked.
How Tempest’s timeline lets creators jump to any checkpoint, edit, and keep playing, slashing iteration time.
Where AI fits today in game development vs. live asset generation (and what’s still rough).
“Lovable for games”: lowering the barrier so non-devs can prompt changes directly in-game.
Market context: gaming + AI is ~USD $1.5–2B today with projections to “tens of billions” by 2029.
Founder mindset: give yourself a focused year, keep lights on with a job, compress learning through reps.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Gaming is huge; meet Jack (Tempest AI)
03:02 – Farm kid to game dev: early life
04:19 – First console memories (Nintendo DS, strict screen time)
07:00 – Designing engaging games; making content to learn
08:05 – Indie projects, clients, and the post-school fork in the road
12:00 – De-risking vs passion; finance path vs gaming; GPT-3 moment
16:03 – Dropping out; night jobs while building Tempest
17:26 – Founder psychology: knowledge, ego, experience
20:20 – Community fuel: Annie Liao & Build Club
24:00 – Tempest focus + the gaming-AI market snapshot
25:18 – Vision: AI-native “never-ending” games (and the hard bits)
28:04 – Context engineering; gen-AI in the dev pipeline
30:00 – What Tempest is: “Lovable for games” (consumer prompt UX)
31:18 – The slow iteration problem in game dev
32:07 – Coding agent + timeline scrubber (edit your game like a video)
33:28 – Building with users: sit-with testing to dashboards
35:10 – Will AI reduce or amplify creativity?
38:05 – The next 5 years: more personal, more experimental games
39:31 – Fundraising: where the round is at
40:08 – How they raised: two years of public building & updates
42:00 – Wrap and where to follow Tempest
Guest
Jack Wakem — Founder, Tempest AI.
Rural NSW origin story → Uni (Finance + CS) → drops out, works nights (pest control/industrial cleaning) while building Tempest.
About Tempest AI
Started by prototyping endless, AI-driven RPGs with custom context schemas and an in-house engine to give LLMs reliable world state. Pivoted ~3 months ago into a consumer game-creation platform with a friction-free UX and a unique timeline editor.
Tempest website: https://alpha.tempestengine.ai/
Jack Wakem: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-wakem-ab7170230/
Quote to remember
“You only lose when you quit… keep working at one thing long enough and compounding kicks in.”
Join the convers
Other Links
🎙️our podcast links here: https://digitalnexuspodcast.com/
👤Chris on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pcsinclair/
👤Mark on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmonfort/
👤 Mark on Twitter - https://twitter.com/captdefi
SHOWNOTE LINKS
🔗 SIKE - https://sike.ai/
🌐Digital Village - https://digitalvillage.network/
🌐NotCentralised - https://www.notcentralised.com/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DigitalNexusPodcast
X (twitter): @DigitalNexus
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