Legends Barbershop

Legends Barbershop (working title Barbershop Simulator) is a 16-bit-styled barbershop tycoon concept presented as a fictional early-1990s cartridge release, complete with period-accurate box art — players build a barber's reputation cut by cut, then grow a business empire across the city.

It exists as a test of an end-to-end AI-assisted game-design pipeline — moving from a one-line pitch to a fully art-directed concept and a playable prototype through prompting alone, without a studio.

Front and back box art, a title and character-select screen introducing six barbers from different cities and eras, the core gameplay loop across cutting, driving, business management, and real-estate expansion, a results and reputation screen, character reference sheets, a sprite and object reference sheet, and a playable React prototype implementing the cutting and driving minigames.

Most game concepts stay a one-paragraph pitch, because making them tangible normally needs an art team and an engineering team before anyone can feel whether the idea works.

Treat concept art as the game design document: lock a single retro art direction and prompt out every screen of the core loop — title, roster, cutting, driving, business, results — before writing a line of code, then prototype the loop that matters most.

AI generated the full visual concept set — box art, UI screens, a six-character roster spanning different cities and decades, and sprite and object reference sheets — from iterative prompts, then scaffolded a playable React prototype (framer-motion, lucide-react, shadcn/ui) implementing the title screen, a precision haircut minigame, a top-down driving minigame, and a day-end results loop.

The founder defined the core loop, tone, character roster, and retro art direction, directed each prompt iteration, and reviewed and selected the final screens and prototype behaviour.

Every core screen — box art, title, character select, cutting, driving, business management, real-estate expansion, and results — was prompted within a single retro cartridge art direction, then reviewed as a set for visual and tonal consistency.

The six-barber roster was built across different cities, decades, and cutting styles, with character sheets and a sprite/object reference set generated to keep the prototype's visual language consistent with the concept art.

The React prototype was used to play-test the core haircut-precision and driving loops — timing, scoring, and pacing — before any further production investment.

Legends Barbershop exists as a complete concept package — box art, UI system, character roster, and a playable prototype of the core loop — not yet in production.

An end-to-end AI-assisted concept-to-prototype pipeline: game design, art direction, and interactive engineering compressed into a single founder-led sprint.