It started with a simple question I asked myself during the June school holidays: "Can I actually build a real website?"
I had no idea how to code. I didn't know what HTML was, what JavaScript did, or how websites even worked behind the scenes. But I was curious — and curiosity, I've learned, is the only starting point you really need.
One day I was browsing Poki.com — a free games website — and I thought it was really cool. I told my dad about it. He looked at it and said, "Why don't you build your own?"
I was surprised. I asked him, "How?"
He smiled and said, "Go figure it out. Use ChatGPT and Claude."
That was it. No instructions, no hand-holding. Just a challenge and two tools. I went away and started asking questions — and those two tools guided me step by step, explaining everything I didn't understand.
Once I had enough information to know what I wanted to build and how, I went back to my dad and briefed him on the plan. He asked me one question: "What's the objective of this project?"
I said, "I just want to try building it."
He said, "OK — I support you."
That was all I needed.
The first real step was registering a domain. I used GoDaddy (paid plan, through my dad's account) to purchase llobi.com — my very first domain name. Seeing it live on the internet felt incredible.
For hosting I used Vercel Pro, also on my dad's account. Every time I push new code to GitHub, Vercel automatically updates the live website within seconds. It's like magic — except now I understand exactly how it works.
Every game started with an idea — something I thought would be fun to play. I'd describe it, build it piece by piece, test it, break it, figure out why it broke, and fix it. Then repeat.
I built Gobble, Snake Classic, Fruit Slice, Speedy Karts, Maze Runner, Star Hopper, Paint Pop, Sky Glider, and more — each one teaching me something new. Physics, animation, collision detection, procedural generation — big words I now actually understand because I had to use them to make real things work.
"There were days when nothing worked. But I kept going — and every bug I fixed taught me more than any lesson could."
The biggest thing I learned isn't about code. It's about not giving up. There were days when nothing worked — when the screen was blank for no reason, when my character fell through the floor, when I spent hours on a bug that turned out to be one wrong line.
AI tools are powerful, but they're just that — tools. You still have to think. You still have to decide what to build, how it should feel, and what to do when something doesn't work. AI can help you build things, but the ideas and the decisions are still yours.
LLOBI.com is still growing. More games, more ideas, more things to learn. This is just the beginning.
If you're a kid reading this and you're curious about building something — just start. You don't need to know everything. You just need to ask the first question.