Dragon Quest Creator Has a New Game, but It's AI-Generated

Published Oct 13, 2026, 6:14 AM EDT Ashely currently works as a news writer for Polygon. After getting her Translation degree, she was hired as a guide and news writer for GameRant and TheGamer. She enjoyed working as an author for these sites for six years, and in 2026, she started at Polygon, where she is able to continue to do what she loves: writing about video games. Yuji Horii openly praises AI Image: Square Enix Sign in to your Polygon.com account Yuji Horii, creator of the Dragon Quest franchise, used Claude to develop and release a browser-based video game in less than an hour. While it resulted in some backlash, Horii expressed how impressed he was with the tool and praised AI for significantly reducing development time and increasing efficiency. Square Enix has been particularly open about increasing its AI usage to improve company efficiency. It wants to hand over the majority of quality assurance and troubleshooting tasks to AI. It has also used AI technology in an attempt to improve text-based adventure games, such as The Portopia Serial Murder Case, a Yuji Horii game originally published in 1983. Yuji Horii releases AI-generated crime-mystery game Horii himself has no issues praising AI for how helpful it can be for game development. Recently, he used Anthropic's Claude AI tool to generate a text-based browser game. He compares the development process to Portopia's 40 years ago, when, to create a game, he had to come up with a story, draw art, and program the code; it could take months or even years to release a game, but now, he was able to create and release his new browser game within 30 minutes simply by giving AI a prompt. In Horii's newest game, players find themselves in an interrogation room. By asking questions and providing evidence, they must catch the subject in his lies and corner him before time runs out or he shuts down. It's a fairly short game that crime enthusiasts would otherwise enjoy, but it could easily have been made by humans. AI has become a major topic of concern in the gaming world. It has led to hundreds of layoffs as companies push to use it to increase efficiency. Big companies like EA have strongly encouraged AI use to boost productivity while saving money. Most recently, Epic Games has told employees to stop hand-writing code and use artificial intelligence instead. According to Epic Games' CEO Tim Sweeney, developers have been asked to "retool for maximum AI acceleration" so they can produce "more and better stuff." This comes after the announcement that a Star Wars and Marvel crossover game developed by Epic has been delayed. Dragon Quest is a popular franchise with many hardcore fans who fell in love with the early games in the series due to the creativity and imagination displayed in their fantasy worlds. It was the hard work of human creators, like Horii himself or Akira Toriyama, who was in charge of character design, that breathed life into these worlds. One has to wonder if fans will show the same level of appreciation for games that are entirely developed by AI.