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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- The Meta Pocket app lets you vibe code small games and widgets.
- You describe what you want and the app does the rest.
- Creations only take about a minute to appear.
Meta just made it incredibly easy to vibe-code your own mini-games, memes, and gizmos.
Last week, the company launched the Pocket app for all users. The app lets you vibe code (instead of writing code line by line, you describe what you want in plain language to an AI) lightweight, playable experiences like games, gizmos that reach to touch, tilt, and sound, and more.
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Like any AI prompt, you can be as specific or vague as you want.
I hadn’t attempted to code or vibe code anything before, so I gave Pocket a test run last weekend. It was way more fun than I expected.
Vibe coding my side hustle into a game
I decided to test Pocket with a game first. I’ve been in my kitchen baking cookies all weekend, so I had cookies on my mind. I asked for: “A game where you have to bake cookies for increasingly angry customers.” Exactly 59 seconds later, my game, which Pocket called Sweet Rush Bakery, was ready.
Sweet Rush Bakery was a minimalistic game with an easy premise — customers lined up and placed orders and I tapped one of four flavors that corresponded with their order, then tapped, a mixing bowl to make the cookie, an oven to bake the cookie, and the customer to serve the cookie. The whole time, the customer’s emoji got angrier. If I didn’t prepare the order quickly enough, the customer left and I was already behind for the next order.
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This version of the game was fun, but aggressively difficult. I found it hard to get through five or six customers before the game told me I had too many and had to shut down my bakery for the day. I asked Pocket to make the game a little less difficult, and the customer’s anger level became much more manageable (and ironically changed the name of the game to Angry Cookie). I spent at least 15 minutes with the game trying to see how high I could run the score each time.
I let my kids create a few things, and they came up with:
- a retro driving game where you dodge incoming traffic
- virtual bubble wrap
- a soundboard for creating music beats
- a tilt-to-balance marble game
- a gizmo that’s just a picture of a cat but when you tap on it, a dramatic sound plays and the image zooms in to the cat’s eye.
All of your creations are saved automatically. You have the option to tweak them in any way (again with a description), or, if you’re happy with them, share to your public account.
Discovering other creations
Creating is just half the fun. Pocket has a social media style feed where you can scroll through other creations. I found games that let me put charms on shoes, try on jewelry (creations can utilize the camera, but Pocket says photos and videos are never sent off the app), and one that let me skip rocks across a lake while it played calming music and offered encouragement like “You are enough” and “Take a breath.”
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Sometimes I’d go right past a game or experience, sometimes I’d stop and spend a few minutes. Before I realized it, I had spent the better part of an hour scrolling.
If you’re tired of just watching content and want to move to a more interactive social feed, Meta’s Pocket app is a surprisingly fun entry point. You don’t need any experience to jump in, just an idea.
