Tropes
A platformer made of familiar game tropes, from collecting 100 coins to the escort mission, each of which plays straight for thirty seconds and then breaks.
Official site mdawg74.itch.io, verified Nov 3, 2026. The developer's own itch.io page (M Dawg, mdawg74), linked from its official AI Browser Game Jam 5 submission page.
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.ioReleasedFree
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Tropes
A comedy platformer built from game tropes everyone knows: collect 100 coins, the ice level, the escort mission, the floor is lava. Each one plays straight for about thirty seconds and then breaks: the coins unionize, the lava falls in love with you, a won fight cuts to the slime's house, where his family is not happy to see him, and the final boss takes a phone call mid-fight, gets fired and walks out. There are over a dozen tropes and over fifty twists, three or four per trope; some are picked at random each run and some only happen if you do something first, and a TWISTS screen keeps what you have found. A run is a short tutorial, six tropes and a final boss assembled from what the run picked up, and takes six to nine minutes; each cleared trope leaves a mutation that carries into the next. A daily cartridge is the same run for everyone that day, with an online board for the fastest clean win, and beating the game once opens the full cartridge of fifteen tropes. The developer, M Dawg, says the code was written with Claude, that the sprites, font and music are drawn and synthesized by that code, and that the idea and some of the twists are the developer's own. Free in the browser on itch.io, on desktop (keyboard or gamepad) or phone, with no ads and no account; it was entered in AI Browser Game Jam 5.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe itch.io page, under “How AI was used”: “The code was written with Claude. The sprites, the font and the music are drawn and synthesized by that same code, and Claude wrote most of the lines. The idea is mine, and so are some of the twists: the fired boss, the slime's home life, the door that slams you.”
- DeveloperAI Browser Game Jam 5 submission, AI Tools Used: “ClaudeAI”. — itch.io (AI Browser Game Jam 5, hosted by Focaccai)
One HTML file whose code was written with Claude, per the itch.io page; the sprites, the font and the music are drawn and synthesized by the same code. The developer came up with the idea and some of the twists, and the page says Claude wrote most of the lines. The daily board is served by a small online leaderboard (a Cloudflare Workers address in the build); everything else runs offline once loaded.
- Engine / framework
- None (single HTML file, JavaScript)
- Languages
- JavaScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“The code was written with Claude.”Verification notes: AI use from the “How AI was used” paragraph on the itch.io page and the AI Tools Used answer (“ClaudeAI”) on the official AI Browser Game Jam 5 submission page, both re-read on 5 Nov 2026. The page says the code was written with Claude and that Claude wrote most of the lines; it names no model, no Claude Code and no percentage, so no AI code share is recorded. The parodied tropes are generic game conventions; no franchise, character or brand is named. Same developer account as Pyrenees Chess. Team size is not stated. The page also lists the game as a submission to Accountability Jam: October 2026, Pixelverse Jam 2026 and bad parody games; its genre field is Platformer, and the page text ends “TROPES v3”. Publication (17 Oct 2026, 05:55 UTC) and last update (31 Oct 2026, 02:08 UTC) and the English language field from the itch.io page. The build talks only to its own daily-board server (a Cloudflare Workers address, with a Cloudflare Turnstile check) and makes no calls to AI services (checked 5 Nov 2026). Jam voting was still open on 5 Nov 2026, so no placement is recorded; itch.io shows no public rating. The game was not played.
Development history
Published on itch.io (05:55 UTC) and submitted to AI Browser Game Jam 5 (theme: Torch) on the jam's opening day.
Last update to the itch.io page at the time of checking (02:08 UTC); AI Browser Game Jam 5 submissions close the same day, and voting was still in progress on 5 Nov 2026.
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) on desktop or phone, with no ads and no account; it runs offline once loaded, except for the daily board. Optional support payments are accepted.
Not publicly available: itch.io rating, Gross revenue.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tropes by M Dawg itch.io | Store page | Oct 17, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Rate Tropes for AI Browser Game Jam 5 itch.io (AI Browser Game Jam 5, hosted by Focaccai) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| AI Browser Game Jam 5 itch.io (Focaccai) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
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