10-Year-Old Develops Award-Winning Game Using AI Dialogue
A 10-year-old in Shanghai created a Pac-Man-style game using the AI platform "Linqiu" and won the gold prize for creativity in an AI contest.
A primary school student from Shanghai has won the gold prize at a contest for developing a game using an AI creation platform. This case highlights the transformative impact of dramatically lowering technical barriers, as the concept of “Vibe Coding” — creating programs solely through natural language dialogue — becomes a reality.
A Gold-Winning Game Created by a 10-Year-Old
Peng, a third-grader from Shanghai’s Pudong New District, developed a game called “Super Pac-Man Adventure” using the AI creation platform “Linqiu.” The game features five stages, three difficulty levels, and three initial character skills. It even includes a “stage editor,” allowing players to freely modify game levels.
During development, Peng faced a classic collision detection bug where characters would get stuck in walls. In traditional game development, fixing such bugs would require complex algorithms. However, Peng ingeniously turned this technical flaw into a game feature called the “wall-passing skill.” Judges praised this innovative approach, calling it “a level of creative thinking that even many professional developers might not possess.”
The “520 Linqiu AI Creation Contest,” hosted by the platform’s operator, Shanghai Yusheng Science, attracted numerous amateur creators over a span of 20 days. The gold prize went to 10-year-old Peng, while the silver prize was awarded to a practicing urologist for creating “The Romantic Demise of Sperm,” and the bronze prize went to a product manager in the AI consulting industry for developing “Lean Startup Consulting Hub.”
Vibe Coding:
Redefining the Boundaries of Creation
“Vibe Coding,” a concept first proposed by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy in early 2025, skips traditional coding processes by generating programs through natural language dialogue. Unlike developer-oriented tools like Cursor or Claude Code, Linqiu targets non-programmers, allowing users to input their ideas and create applications without ever touching a line of code.
According to Linqiu’s statistics, 62.5% of its users are complete beginners to programming. Notably, the success rate among non-specialists surpasses that of experts. Teachers using Linqiu have a success rate of 98.1%, while students achieve an impressive 99.3%, outperforming programmers and product managers.
Bronze prize winner Xu, a product manager with a computer science background, remarked, “The platform’s fundamental advantage lies in bypassing programming barriers and directly converting product logic into interactive prototypes.”
Many award-winning entries reflect the creators’ professional expertise, such as a participant in Guangdong’s automotive rescue service industry who built a corporate website, or a doctor who developed an interactive science education game based on medical knowledge. The creator of the silver-winning “The Romantic Demise of Sperm,” a urologist, commented, “Previously, I tried disseminating scientific knowledge through articles and shows, but AI creation models have made gamification and interactivity possible.”
Editorial Opinion
In the short term, the proliferation of Vibe Coding platforms is expected to dramatically increase app development by non-engineers. Professionals in fields like education, healthcare, and consulting could rapidly transform their specialized knowledge into marketable products, overcoming engineering resource limitations that previously hindered niche app development. However, this also raises new challenges, such as quality assurance and security for generated codes.
In the long term, the value of “programming skills” will likely be redefined. As coding itself becomes commoditized, the core competencies required of humans will shift toward “problem definition” and “creative thinking.” As noted in a report by Peking University’s Qingniao Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, “When code generation becomes as cheap as air, the focus of cognition will shift from ‘How’ to ‘What’ and ‘Why.’” Educational institutions and corporate talent strategies will need to adapt to this paradigm shift.
References
- 10-Year-Old Chats with AI to Create Award-Winning Game - Titanium Media — Published June 26, 2026
Frequently Asked Questions
- What features does the Linqiu platform offer?
- Users can input ideas in natural language, and the system automatically analyzes requirements to generate and publish applications without any coding. Unlike tools like Cursor or Claude Code, Linqiu primarily targets non-programmers.
- How does Vibe Coding differ from traditional programming?
- Vibe Coding generates programs through natural language dialogue, bypassing traditional coding processes. While it greatly reduces technical barriers, ensuring the quality and security of generated outputs remains an ongoing challenge.
- What aspects of the 10-year-old's game were highly praised?
- Peng's innovative approach in turning a collision detection bug into the game's "wall-passing skill" was lauded for its creative thinking, demonstrating how a technical flaw can become a core feature of the game.
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