King's Bet is a roguelite deckbuilder where poker hands power rusty machines in a dark steampunk well. It's built by FireBrick Games, an independent gaming collective focused on unconventional mechanics and high-stakes gameplay — they're also behind the upcoming One Last Hand.
For King's Bet, the team needed a full roster of animated 2D enemies that matched the game's grimy, industrial aesthetic. They used Ludo.ai to get it done in six weeks. We talked to Semih Hakyemez, Co-founder and Game Director at FireBrick, to understand how Ludo.ai fit into their process.
The Challenge: Animated Enemies on a Tight Clock
King's Bet's visual identity is heavy on atmosphere — corroded machines, dark tunnels, mechanical creatures. Every enemy needed to feel like it belonged in that world, with fluid sprite animations that held up in combat.
The bottleneck was straightforward: hand-animating that many enemy sprites through a traditional pipeline would have eaten most of the development time, leaving little room for the actual game design work — balancing the poker mechanics, tuning the roguelite progression, building out the map.
The Workflow: Sprites in Minutes, Not Days
FireBrick used Ludo.ai's sprite generation and animation tools to build their enemy pipeline. Once they dialed in the right prompts and process, each animation took roughly 2–3 minutes to produce and integrate into the game.
"Each animation was taking just 2–3 minutes to produce and integrate, which is something that would normally take days with a traditional workflow."
— Semih Hakyemez, Co-founder & Game Director, FireBrick Games
Here are two enemy animations from the game, generated with Ludo.ai:
What the Speed Actually Unlocked
The per-asset time savings were significant on their own, but what Semih highlights is what that speed made possible creatively. With animations generating in minutes, the team could try different silhouettes, motion styles, and visual directions without the usual cost of experimentation.
"What really stood out was how Ludo enabled rapid experimentation. We could explore different animation styles, silhouettes, and motion ideas without slowing the team down, which helped us lock the game's visual direction much faster."
— Semih Hakyemez
In practice, this meant FireBrick could stay focused on what makes King's Bet distinctive — the poker-machine combat, the tension of when to hold cards vs. cash them out — rather than being stuck in an asset production grind.
"Without Ludo.ai, shipping King's Bet in six weeks would have been extremely difficult. It removed a huge production bottleneck and let us stay focused on gameplay and feel instead of asset throughput."
— Semih Hakyemez
Play King's Bet
King's Bet is planned for Q3 2026 on Steam. Four playable characters, deep roguelite progression, and a dark steampunk world built around strategic card combat.
Wishlist King's Bet on Steam →
Learn more about FireBrick Games at firebrick.games.
King's Bet is developed by FireBrick Games. Enemy sprite animations shown in this post were created using Ludo.ai.
