About
The Project
Pirate Arcade is a collection of 5 classic arcade games reimagined with a pirate nautical theme. It's also a public workbench — an experiment in how far a zero-cost AI-assisted development workflow can go when you combine free coding tools, local hardware, and open source infrastructure.
Builder
Product-Minded Engineering
This project demonstrates decision-making across the product stack: choosing the right abstraction (Phaser vs Pygbag) and designing for constraints (free infrastructure, mobile touch). The engineering evidence lives on the Source page.
The work reflects a background in decision science, data products, and practical systems — building tools that solve real problems, documenting what works, and treating AI as a force multiplier rather than a replacement for judgment.
Why
Why Pirate Arcade?
Classic arcade games are well-understood problems, making them ideal test cases for evaluating AI-assisted coding tools. Every game here is a data point in the experiment — a record of what worked, what didn't, and how the development process changes when code generation is essentially free.
This is not a commercial game studio. Not a startup. Not a subscription product. It's a public side project — a workspace for exploring zero-cost AI workflows and shipping real software on free infrastructure.
Maker
Made by Erich Donahue
Decision science, data products, practical systems, and creative technical work built in the open. Exploring AI-assisted development as a force multiplier for product-minded engineering. I build practical decision tools, data products, and creative systems. This project is my public workbench for exploring AI-assisted development — the boundary of what a single person with good tools and free infrastructure can ship.
