No images. No sprites. Just brackets for flippers, an @ for the ball, and a playfield that’s actually a living document.

Back in the day, that would’ve stayed a fever dream. But lately I’d been curious about AI‑assisted coding – sketch the idea, describe the impossible, and let the LLM wrestle with the details. So I opened a new chat and typed: “I want a pinball game where the bumpers are letters, the ball pushes words out of its way, and everything renders in pure ASCII – no graphics, no textures.”

The AI gave me a buggy, glorious mess. The ball clipped through pegs. The text flow did the opposite of what I asked. But it almost worked.

Several hours later, Pretext Chinko was playable.

Yeah, one night. From a janky prototype where the ball would occasionally escape into the void, to a full‑blown browser‑based pinball machine with real‑time typography, glowing borders, and a physics engine that treats every character like a physical object. I built most of it after midnight, stealing hours between my day job and sleep.

The trickiest part? Getting the text to flow around the ball and the pegs – not through them. I kept telling the AI: “Imagine a river of words that parts when the ball comes near.” It took twenty‑two attempts and one accidental rewrite of the entire collision system, but eventually the Pretext layout engine was born. It’s a tiny, custom‑built beast that reroutes letters in real time. No two frames look the same.

Pretext Chinko is now live on my website – no install, no download, just open the page and play. It’s pure ASCII, completely free, and honestly a little unhinged. The ball has momentum. The text dodges you.

If you’ve ever wondered what a pinball machine would look like if it grew up in a terminal emulator, go play it.

Head to kadfun.com/pretextchinko – no download, just enjoy it.

And if the ball flies off the screen? Refresh the page. That’s not a bug. That’s a feature I haven’t fixed yet.