Curve Clash: the accountant who launched a game made with AI

Who is Jonathan Bjerk, and did he already know how to code?

Jonathan Bjerk is 38, lives in Norway, is a trained accountant and works full time¹. He did not code. According to him, he only knew the basics of HTML and CSS, the languages that build web pages, which he had taught himself to make simple websites¹.

He grew up playing Achtung, die Kurve!, a computer game from the 1990s, with his friends, all on the same keyboard¹. He wanted to bring exactly that feeling to phones, with people from all over the world playing together online¹.

One night in May 2025, he started trying out ChatGPT. On May 28, he started the game¹.

How do you play Curve Clash?

Curve Clash is a snake game for several people at once. Each player steers a line that leaves a trail across the screen. Whoever hits a trail, someone else's or their own, is out of the round. The last one alive wins the round and scores points².

He describes it himself as the old snake game mixed with the games where everyone fights until one is left, known as battle royale¹. What hooks people is the short round: the game's website counts on the urge to play just one more².

There are several ways to play²³:

• Solo, against computer-controlled snakes, with difficulty levels.
• Online, against people from other countries, in elimination rounds that change the rules each time (faster, zigzag, no walls).
• In the same room: the game runs on a big screen, like the TV, and each person uses their own phone as a controller, joining with a QR code.

How did he make the game with AI?

AI wrote the code; he decided how the game would work. He started with ChatGPT, moved to Cursor and then to Claude, which he now uses almost all the time¹. Even the choice of the game's underlying tools, Flutter and Firebase, was a suggestion from the AI, so the same game would work on the iPhone, on Android and in the browser¹.

What stayed with him was what AI doesn't decide: the game modes, the product choices and the numbers, like how fast the snake turns and how thick the trail is. According to him, he spent hours just playing and tweaking those numbers¹. The title of the interview he gave sums up the split: "AI was my engineering team, not my creative director"¹.

How long did it take, without quitting his job?

Less than seven months, according to him¹. This was the order:

Throughout that time, he kept working full time as an accountant¹. The interview doesn't say at what hours he worked on the game.

What went wrong along the way?

The worst part was the mode where several people play together online. In September and October, he was stuck on sync errors between the players' devices¹. According to him, the AI wrote the code, but tracking down that kind of bug, the kind that appears and disappears, took a lot of patience and a lot of back-and-forth¹.

The lesson he took from it: when something breaks, you still need to understand what you built in depth¹. He says that what took him a month to fix in June he now fixes in two days, because of what he learned and, above all, because of the tools¹.

Beyond the game itself came the work nobody sees: the store listings, the promotional images, the translation, the server, the analytics and the store rules¹. On the App Store, the game appears in several languages, including Portuguese³.

How many people have played Curve Clash?

More than 1,500 by April 2026, adding up to more than 15,000 minutes of play, according to him¹. That is what he says he is proudest of: people didn't just download it, they actually played¹. In October 2026, the game's App Store listing, written by the developer himself, mentioned more than 1,750 players³.

On launch weekend, the game reached 4th place among family games in the Norwegian store. He himself points out that it didn't last¹.

Then came what he calls by far the hardest part: getting people to find the game¹. To promote a tournament, he messaged more than a thousand gaming video creators on TikTok¹.

The game is free, with short ads between rounds and a paid version that removes the ads². How much it earns has not been disclosed.

By the numbers

What does he advise people who are just starting?

Four things, according to him¹:

• Don't start with an online multiplayer game. First make playing solo fun.
• Don't keep switching AIs. Every switch costs time to adjust.
• Cut without mercy. Every extra feature in the game has to be maintained and tuned later.
• Get real people playing early, and often.

The first piece of advice is the one he learned the hard way: it was precisely the multiplayer mode that held him up for two months (our reading). If you're choosing yours, see what your first game should be.

The other side

This is one case, and all the numbers are his. Fifteen hundred people is very few compared with famous games, and the revenue hasn't been disclosed: the story proves you can make and publish a game, not that it makes money. He also didn't start from absolute zero: he knew how to build simple websites. And it wasn't easy: two months stuck on bugs, hours of testing and a promotion effort he calls the hardest part. The seven months were his timeline, on a small game, and are not a deadline for anyone else.

What does this story change for people who don't code?

In our reading, the Curve Clash story shows the new division of labor. AI wrote the code, which used to require a programmer. Jonathan did the rest: he chose the game, decided how it behaves, tested it for hours, fixed it patiently and went looking for players.

Compare it with Masako Wakamiya, who in 2017, without AI, had to study programming and have a teacher to make her game. The part she called hard is the part AI does today, which came to be called vibe coding. The rest still belongs to the person making the game. To better understand this division, see what AI does and what stays with you.