I Was Supposed to Enter a Contest, I Ended Up Making a Game..

How a conversation with my wife, a little curiosity, and a whole lot of experimenting turned into DON'T TOUCH THAT!

By: Knux456 | October 21st, 2026 | Wednesday 4:30am EST

It started with my wife telling me about a college-related opportunity involving ChatGPT and game development. That's it. That was the beginning. I wasn't sitting around planning to become the next big game developer. I wasn't sketching out some massive gaming empire. I was just curious. There was a chance to create something, and I figured, why not see what I could come up with? Now here I am, developing a multiplayer game called DON'T TOUCH THAT! under my own studio, BBAGStudios. Yeah. That escalated pretty quickly. 😂

How It Happened

When I first started exploring the contest, I did what I always do when something catches my attention: I started asking questions. I bounced concepts off ChatGPT, challenged things that didn't make sense, and tried to figure out what kind of game I'd actually want to play.

One of the first ideas was called Read the Room, a social game about predicting how people would respond to different situations. We even explored ways to bring AI into the gameplay.

It was interesting, but something wasn't clicking, that's an important part of creating anything. An idea can sound good when you're explaining it and still not be the idea you should spend months building. Then I looked over and saw my kids playing air hockey. Two people. One table. A little competition. Nobody needs a 45-minute tutorial to understand what's happening, and that got my wheels turning.

What if I made something with that same instant, competitive energy, but instead of hitting a puck, players were bouncing around an arena trying to knock each other out? What if the arena itself could change? What if there was a button players probably shouldn't touch?

Just like that, DON'T TOUCH THAT! became a real concept. Four players. Different colors. Bouncing around an arena, knocking each other toward the goals. One big red button that flips the whole arena on its head. Simple enough to understand in seconds, unpredictable enough to make you want another round. At least, that's what I'm trying to build.

Then I Had a Different Thought

The more we worked on it, the more I started looking at it differently. I was supposed to be making something for a contest, but somewhere along the way I stopped thinking about what the judges might like and started thinking about what I wanted this game to become.

So I asked myself: why am I building something I actually like just to enter it into somebody else's competition?

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with contests. They create real opportunities for people who might not otherwise get noticed. Once I started reading the terms, thinking about ownership, and thinking about what I wanted for this game beyond a deadline, I made a decision. Screw the contest. I'm keeping this one. 😂 DON'T TOUCH THAT! isn't a contest submission anymore. It's a BBAGStudios game. Something I can keep developing, keep improving, and eventually release on my own terms. That one decision changed the whole project for me.

Coming Up With It Is the Easy Part

Having an idea is one thing. Making that idea work? Whole different conversation. All of a sudden I'm learning about multiplayer connections. Servers. Player movement. Collision detection. Game rules. Testing. Bugs.

Oh, the bugs. 😂 Something that sounds incredibly simple when you describe it gets complicated fast when four players all need to experience it correctly, and no, using AI doesn't magically make those problems disappear. ChatGPT helps me think through concepts, organize ideas, and understand development decisions, but I still have to decide what I want, test whether it works, recognize when something feels wrong, and make the calls on where the game goes.

Sometimes I have to stop and say, "No, that's not what I meant." Sometimes we revisit something we thought was already working. And sometimes an idea that sounds amazing on paper turns out to be terrible the second you actually play it. That's development, apparently. I'm not going to sit here pretending I'm some veteran programmer who's been building games for 20 years. I'm a gamer who decided to try making one. There's a difference.

The Part I Didn't Expect

What I didn't expect was how this game would start connecting with everything else I've been building. The Gamerhood was already my place to talk games and connect with other gamers. BBAGStudios became the home for original games. And then there was Discord. I wanted The Gamerhood to have a real community space, somewhere people could talk gaming, find other players, share clips, and eventually help test what I'm making. So I put it together: channels, rules, a playtesting area, bug reports.

Then something happened that probably wouldn't seem like a big deal to somebody running a server with thousands of members. Somebody actually joined. He saw DON'T TOUCH THAT!, asked if I needed a tester, and said he was in. He plays on Android and PC. I welcomed him, told him I was getting everything ready for community testing, and said I'd keep him posted. He hit me back with: "Niceee!! Keep me posted, man!"

I know. It's one person, but I'm not going to act like that wasn't cool. When you've been working on something behind the scenes, wondering if anybody's even going to care, a complete stranger showing up to volunteer hits different. For the first time, my Discord felt less like a bunch of empty channels and more like an actual neighborhood.

That's exactly what I want The Gamerhood to be.

So What's Next?

DON'T TOUCH THAT! isn't finished, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. There's testing to do, things to improve, and probably a few more headaches around the corner. I'm enjoying the process, and I'm starting to see possibilities I wasn't even thinking about when this started.

Maybe The Gamerhood becomes a place where more independent developers can share what they're creating. Maybe we shine a light on smaller streamers and gaming creators. I'm even toying with the idea of a digital Gamerhood Magazine, but one thing at a time. I still have a game to finish. 😂

This isn't an overnight success story. It's not a blueprint for becoming a millionaire, and it's definitely not one of those "just believe in yourself and it all works out" stories. I'm still figuring this out, but a few weeks ago, DON'T TOUCH THAT! was just an idea. Now it's a playable project with its own identity, a development process, and somebody already asking when he can test it. Whether it blows up or stays a small indie game that a handful of people love, I'm glad I decided to see how far I could take it.

Honestly, the best part of gaming isn't only playing what somebody else created. Sometimes it's finding out what happens when you create something yourself.

So let me ask you: have you ever thought about making a game of your own? And if you could playtest something before anybody else, what would you want to see in it?

Drop it in the comments, or come hang out in the Discord. The playtesting channel is waiting.

— Knux456

The Gamerhood | BBAGStudios