Prompting is the core skill on Tesana. The AI acts on exactly what you write, so the difference between a mediocre result and a great one is usually the prompt, not the model.

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First prompts: be a creative brief

Your opening prompt sets the foundation. Cover these five things:
A great first prompt: “Create a top-down pixel art dungeon crawler where the player explores a procedurally generated dungeon. The player has a sword and shield, can fight skeleton enemies, collect gold, and find treasure chests. Dark, moody art with torchlight effects. The player wins by finding the exit on each floor and loses when health reaches zero.”
A vague prompt: “Make me a fun game.” You’ll get something, but almost certainly not what you had in mind. The more you describe, the more control you have.

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Follow-up prompts: one change at a time

After the first build, everything is iteration. The golden rule: one focused change per prompt.
  • ✅ “Increase the player’s movement speed by 20% and add a double-jump”
  • ✅ “Add a pause menu with resume, restart, and quit buttons”
  • ❌ “Make it better” — the AI has to guess what “better” means
  • ❌ “Redo the combat, add 5 levels, new art style, and multiplayer” — a giant session that’s expensive, slow, and hard to steer
Small steps are also cheaper: each prompt is billed on actual work done, and short focused sessions do less work.

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Steering tools beyond text

  • Reference images — the strongest way to control art style. A picture beats three paragraphs of style description.
  • Character references — turn an image of a character into your game’s character.
  • Plan mode — for big changes, have the AI propose a plan you approve before it builds.
  • Screenshots — when reporting visual issues, attach a screenshot from the preview (the camera button). See Debugging your game.
  • Voice mode — dictate your prompt instead of typing.

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When the AI asks you questions

If your request is ambiguous, the AI pauses and asks — for example, “should enemies respawn after the player dies?” with options to pick from. The game card shows Answer questions when a build is waiting on you. Answering precisely keeps the build on track; nothing is metered while it waits.

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Prompting for fixes

Bug-fix prompts have their own craft — what you did, what you expected, what happened, where, how often. Full guide: Debugging your game.