Rumba Rodeo
Free · play online in your browser, no download
Drive a robot vacuum and clean every speck of dust in the room before the house cats catch you.
Official site aelysium.itch.io, verified Nov 3, 2026. The developer's own itch.io page (aely, aelysium), linked from its official Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 submission page.
Rights holder / original work: Roomba (iRobot)
The itch.io page and the jam answer call the player's robot vacuum “the Roomba”, iRobot's trademark for its robot vacuums; the game's title uses the spelling “Rumba”. No source mentions a licence or any connection to iRobot. (itch.io)
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 — itch.ioitch.ioEarly access · itch.io status: In developmentFree
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Rumba Rodeo
An arcade game in which you are a robot vacuum up against house cats: clean every speck of dust in the room before the cats catch you. You drive with the arrow keys or WASD and dash with Space, and a cat that catches you costs one of three battery bars. A catnip jar makes nearby cats go loopy for five seconds, and bumping a loopy cat sends it home for a nap; BOOST gives a few seconds of top speed, cracked floor can only be crossed with a dash, and sleeping cats are in the way and wake up if you push into them. There are 16 rooms in three parts, from rooms that teach the basics to rooms with two and then three cats; clearing them all rolls the credits and opens an Unlimited mode whose rooms are generated, with all four cats at once only in very hard Unlimited. Following the jam's restriction, there are no clickable buttons: menus, level select and settings are chosen by driving onto a button. The developer, aely, designed the game and its rooms and says the code was written with Claude Code and Codex, including the cats' behaviour, a map-grid level editor, the Unlimited room generator and QA bots that played every room to tune the difficulty; the cats run on fixed rules, with no live AI. Made for Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 (theme: Cat and Robot); free in the browser on itch.io, best on a computer, with swipe and tap controls on phones.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe jam answer: “Claude Code and Codex wrote the code: the game, the cats' behaviour, a map-grid level editor, the Unlimited room generator, and QA bots (including a "smart" bot that lures cats with catnip) that played every room to tune the difficulty.” The itch.io page says the same under “How AI was used”. AI image generation made reference art (the title illustration, rooms and characters), which was then reworked as pixel art in Aseprite, and the music track Pixel Rumba was made with Suno. The cats run on fixed rules; there is no live AI in the game. The sources do not say how the code was split between Claude Code and Codex, and name no models.
- Developeritch.io page, How AI was used: “Code: written with Claude Code and Codex: the game, the cats' behaviour, the map-grid level editor, the Unlimited room generator, and the QA bots that played every room to tune the difficulty.” — itch.io
- OfficialJam rule 1: AI must genuinely be part of the build (code, art, audio, writing, design or a live system), and entrants must say what they used and where. — itch.io (dg)
Named alongside Claude Code as writing the code, per the jam answer and the itch.io page; the split between the two is not stated.
Ideas and design were brainstormed with Claude, per the itch.io page (the jam answer: “Claude for ideas and design”).
Solo: aely designed the game and the rooms and directed the work, per the team answer. Claude was used for ideas and design, and Claude Code and Codex wrote the code, including a map-grid level editor, the generator for Unlimited rooms and QA bots, one of which lures cats with catnip, that played every room to tune the difficulty. Reference art came from AI image generation and was reworked as pixel art in Aseprite; the music track was made with Suno. The cats follow fixed rules and the game makes no AI calls. The browser build is a set of plain JavaScript modules (observed).
- Engine / framework
- None (vanilla JavaScript)
- Languages
- JavaScript
- Team size
- 1 (solo)Developer Reporteditch.io (Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1, hosted by dg)
- Initial build time
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“Claude Code and Codex wrote the code”Verification notes: Gameplay, rooms, controls, team and AI use from the developer's itch.io page (published 9 Oct 2026, 04:26 UTC; status In development; HTML5; genre Action; AI disclosure ticks Code, Graphics, Sounds and Text) and the answers on the official Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 submission page, both re-read on 5 Nov 2026. The developer is the same aely (itch.io account aelysium) who made Dark Hours, so the existing developer entry is used; the team answer reads “Solo: Aely (design, rooms, direction)”, so team size is recorded as one. Claude Code is recorded as primary because it is named first; the sources give no split with Codex and no code share, so no AI code share is recorded. The page calls the player's robot vacuum “the Roomba”, an iRobot trademark (see the IP notice). Jamference (2 to 9 Oct 2026, theme Cat and Robot, restriction Movement Input Only; 36 entries) has published results: #13 overall (score 3.758) from 11 ratings, with Fun (#12) the best placing. The browser build (a redirect to a title page and its JavaScript modules) was checked for calls to AI services and none were found. itch.io shows no public rating and no download count. The engine is not named on the page. We did not play the game.
Development history
Published on itch.io (04:26 UTC) and submitted to Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 (theme: Cat and Robot), 1 hour and 13 minutes before the deadline.
Jamference voting ends (07:00 UTC); results: #13 overall out of 36 entries, from 11 ratings.
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.
itch.io
Free in the browser (HTML5); keyboard on a computer, or swipe to steer and tap to dash on a phone. Progress is kept in the browser.
Not publicly available: itch.io rating, Gross revenue.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rumba Rodeo by aely itch.io | Store page | Oct 9, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Rumba Rodeo for Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 (submission and results) itch.io (Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1, hosted by dg) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 itch.io (dg) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) aely | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
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