Vibe coding js13kGames shader for the V Shaders challenge

I vibe coded a shader in an hour and submitted it to the V Shaders challenge which offers $12k prize pool - you can do it too as the deadline is tomorrow, May 22nd.

One of the optional challenges in the recently ended Gamedev.js Jam 2025 was V Shaders one by the V Systems team, which was all about creating a 16 kilobyte shader and uploading it to their Marketplace as an NFT.

I can’t afford to have enough spare time to participate in my own jams and competitions, but this was a bit different: the deadline was extended from the original April 26th. When I wrapped Gamedev.js Jam 2025 I could check how easy (or difficult) it was to participate, as the submission process was outside of Itch.

I wanted to properly start coding the shader in VS Code or Cursor, but decided to ask ChatGPT a few general questions about shaders first. Interestingly enough, after a few answers I ended up with a source code for an example shader, and decided to iterate on that.

After a few simple prompts I ended up with a simple, basic shader animating “flow” in the background, with the js13kGames logo wiggling in the front. I’ve updated the colors to reflect the js13kGames branding and that’s it!

It would take 5 minutes, but the remaining 55 was spent on trying to force ChatGPT into embedding the svg logo in a shader itself - after about ten failed attempts at fixing it I had to do a small research myself and apply the changes manually.

After all the output was a single index.html file, so it wasn’t that difficult. I zipped it and moved to the next steps:

1. Create a (JavaScript) shader
2. Create the Titan wallet
3. Get some $VSYS
4. Create a new collection
5. Mint your NFT
6. …
7. PROFIT

Follow the introductory blog post and step-by-step tutorial from the V Systems folks and you’ll easily make a submission yourself. You can even ignore forking their repo and doing all the Rust building as the zip with the html file containing the shader is good enough to be submitted to the Marketplace directly.

You do need a bit of $VSYS to create your collection in their Marketplace, which you’d get from V Systems folks, but if you don’t want to wait you can buy some through an exchange like MEXC. You only need a few cents to do that though, and then you’ll be able to mint NFTs freely.

That’s it - two hours of tinkering to have a chance at winning up to $1000 in four different categories with the total prize pool of $12000, so definitely worth checking out!