Finish the Story
An unofficial Halo 3 fan project that turns the Guardian map into a playable personal website, with a treasure hunt through the developer's life; Codex wrote essentially all of the code.
Official site runboli.com, verified Nov 3, 2026. The developer's own site; it is the URL of the developer's Show HN post.
Rights holder / original work: Halo (Microsoft / Halo Studios)
An unofficial, non-commercial fan project set in Halo 3's Guardian map. It uses an original Guardian asset export (geometry, UV coordinates and textures) distributed through the fan-run Halo Archive, and the developer says the UI and many of the sound effects are Halo material as well; the site recreates the Halo 3 menu and plays its music. The site's credits say Halo names and logos are Microsoft trademarks, the assets belong to Microsoft and their respective owners, and the project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft, Xbox, Bungie or 343 Industries. The developer says they do not own or have a licence to the Guardian assets and would take the site down or change it if Microsoft or Halo Studios asked. (Hacker News (runshouse))
VibeGameDB lists this game only to document that it was made with AI coding tools. We do not host it, we do not represent the rights holder, and listing it does not mean it is licensed.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — official siteBrowserReleased · Unofficial, non-commercial Halo fan projectFree
Runs in a desktop or mobile browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Finish the Story
A personal website you play as a first-person game inside Guardian, a multiplayer map from Halo 3. You start in a recreation of the Halo 3 main menu, go through the lobby and spawn on the map, then explore it with WASD and the mouse to find photos, stories, quests, mini-games and Easter eggs about the developer's life; there are lifts, pickups and weapons to handle, and no sign-up. The developer, Runbo Li, calls Guardian their third place growing up and the closest thing they had to a digital home, and calls the site an unofficial, non-commercial fan project. The map geometry and textures are not AI-made: they come from an original Guardian asset export shared through the fan-run Halo Archive, and the developer says the UI and many sound effects are Halo material too. Everything on top of the map, from shaders and physics to movement, collision and quest routing, was written with OpenAI's Codex using the Astra model, which the developer says wrote essentially all of the code. It runs free in the browser and best on a desktop; touch controls work on phones, with a narrow view in portrait.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe developer writes “I built it with Codex using Astra” and says it wrote essentially all of the code: 20,552 lines of TypeScript across 118 files, using 973M tokens and 37 hours of runtime, alongside about 25–30 hours of the developer's own time. According to the post, the AI-generated part is everything needed to turn the map into a complete game: shaders, lighting, scenario tags, physics, animations, collision, movement, sky and fog, lifts, pickups, weapon handling and quest routing. The map itself is not AI-generated, and every pickup was placed by hand against the geometry with callout maps and a dev-only coordinate locator. In a reply the developer adds that Astra did all of the coding and that the hard parts were describing bugs that were not visual and deciding where memories should go, pacing and whether something was fun. Astra is the name of OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model, which OpenAI released for ChatGPT and Codex in September 2026; the post gives no model ID.
- DeveloperReply in the Show HN thread: “Coding wasn't the hard part because Astra did all of it.” … “I couldn't have built this without AI.” — Hacker News (runshouse)
- Unverified9to5Mac (4 Sep 2026): OpenAI releases GPT-6 Astra for ChatGPT and Codex. We match the developer's “Astra” to this model by name; the developer does not say GPT-6. — 9to5Mac
A browser game in TypeScript that loads an original Guardian asset export from the fan-run Halo Archive (an OBJ with 115,250 faces, the original UV coordinates and 42 diffuse textures) through Three.js. Codex with Astra wrote the game layer on top: shaders, lighting, physics, collision, movement, lifts, pickups, weapons and quest routing. The developer placed every pickup by hand using callout maps and a dev-only coordinate locator, and says lining up one lift took about ten iterations. The 21 MB of map geometry and textures load behind the lobby countdown and scorecard screen while the shaders warm up; the game targets 60 fps. The developer says the main effort went into choosing which memories belonged in the map, where each should live and which mechanic fitted it, then replaying to fix bugs and tune movement.
- Engine / framework
- No engine (TypeScript with Three.js)
- Languages
- TypeScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“I built it with Codex using Astra. It wrote essentially all of the code: 20,552 lines of TypeScript across 118 files, 973M tokens, 37 hours of runtime, and about 25-30 hours of my time.”Verification notes: Tool, line count, token count, runtime, the developer's hours and the split between the hand-placed map and the AI-written game layer come from the developer's Show HN post of 16 Sep 2026 (20:08 UTC) and a reply in the thread. The post names Codex as the tool and Astra as what it ran on; Astra is matched to OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra by name (9to5Mac, 4 Sep 2026), but the developer gives no model ID. “Essentially all of the code” is not a number, so no AI code share is recorded. The developer's hours (about 25–30) are not recorded as development time because the calendar time is not stated. The release day is not stated; the Show HN post is the earliest dated source, so no release date is recorded. The site's title, the “Unofficial, non-commercial Halo fan project” label and the credits text were read from the live site on 4 Nov 2026 (UTC); the site's code calls no AI services (checked). The developer is recorded as solo because the post is written in the first person, but team size is not stated. Halo: the post says the geometry, textures, UI and many sound effects are Halo material, and the site plays Halo 3 menu music and video; the credits screen says the project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft, Xbox, Bungie or 343 Industries. No source shows a licence. Location is not stated.
Development history
The developer shows the site on Hacker News (Show HN), crediting Codex with Astra for essentially all of the code.
DeveloperHacker News (runshouse)
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
Browser (official site)
Free; no sign-up. Best on a desktop browser; touch controls work on phones.
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: Concurrent players (site), Monthly revenue, Gross revenue.
Sales & revenue (all platforms)
Browser game — there are no downloads to count.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Show HN: Halo 3's Guardian, playable in the browser, as my personal website Hacker News (runshouse) | Devlog | Sep 16, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Finish the Story: A Playable Personal Website in Halo 3 Runbo Li | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| OpenAI releasing major upgrade to ChatGPT and Codex with GPT-6 Astra, details here 9to5Mac | Press | Sep 4, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) Runbo Li | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
