How I Built “MindMaze” Game Using Amazon Q CLI (And Won a Free T-shirt! 👕🔥)

 

I’m Aman Kumar Happy, and I recently participated in the Amazon Q CLI Game Challenge just to experiment, learn something new, and yes — get that cool free Amazon Q T-shirt 🏆👕.

Here, I’m sharing:
✅ My honest review of Amazon Q CLI
✅ A sneak peek into my game “MindMaze”
✅ Challenges I faced during the process
✅ How you can participate and win too
✅ GitHub repo, blog, video, and full guide

🧩 Game Idea: MindMaze – The Color Code Challenge

“MindMaze” is a fun mini-game where:

The player must memorize and replicate a sequence of flashing colors, which get progressively harder with each level. 🟥🟦🟩🟨

It’s a brain-boosting puzzle game meant to test memory, reflex, and attention, especially for students like me who want to challenge themselves through gamified logic.

I chose this game because:

• I love puzzles & logic games 🧠

• Wanted something small & achievable

• It’s perfect for a beginner game challenge

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🔧 My Setup Experience

❌ The Hard Part

Let me be real with you — setup isn’t super smooth:

• Installing Amazon Q CLI involves multiple steps: AWS login, Node.js, etc.

• Setting up Python + Pygame also needs technical familiarity

• Editing generated files is confusing for non-developers

• And yes — Amazon Q’s terminal output formatting is messy sometimes

✅ The Fun Part

Once it’s working, Q CLI feels magical:

• You just chat in terminal like ChatGPT, and it writes working game code

• You can prompt changes like:

  “Add level system”
  “Include sound effects”
  “Make it more colorful”

It's free, fast, and a great way to explore AI-assisted game dev!

⚙️ What I Tried Adding in MindMaze

✅ Level Progression

• Each correct round increases color sequence length

✅ Sound Feedback

• Correct click = ding

• Wrong click = buzz

✅ Score Tracking

• Points increase as you match colors correctly

🛠️ But... Some Bugs Hit Me 😓

During editing and testing, I ran into common issues:

"I apologize for the difficulties we've encountered with the code..."

But surprisingly, Amazon Q gave a summary of changes, suggested how to restart from a clean version, and even helped fix partial bugs.

This felt like pair programming with AI 

💭 My Honest Review (TL;DR)

Github Repository Link : https://github.com/amankumarhappy/AmazonQgame

Even though it's not fully beginner-friendly, Amazon Q CLI is a powerful AI tool for developers and learners who want to explore how AI can assist in game development.

MindMaze was my first try — and I loved building it.