DEV Community

Cover image for I Used My Last 7% of Copilot Tokens to Bring a 2014 WinForms Game Back to Life

I Used My Last 7% of Copilot Tokens to Bring a 2014 WinForms Game Back to Life

Daniel Balcarek on June 02, 2026

This is a submission for the GitHub Finish-Up-A-Thon Challenge Originally, I didn't plan to join this challenge because I'm moving away from Copil...
Collapse
 
gramli profile image
Daniel Balcarek

Post scriptum:

Thanks to the traffic from this article, I discovered that my game was eagerly downloading a 9 MB WAV file even when music was disabled. ๐Ÿ˜…

I have now switched it to a 1.7 MB MP3 and load it only when the player actually enables music.

So the article ended up improving not only my nostalgia project, but also my Cloud Run bill. ๐Ÿ˜…

Collapse
 
webdeveloperhyper profile image
Web Developer Hyper

Nice! Itโ€™s fun and a great brain exercise ๐Ÿ‘ You were already a great developer even 12 years ago!

Collapse
 
gramli profile image
Daniel Balcarek

Oh, thanks! That warms my heart ๐Ÿ˜Š

Funny enough, after all these years, level 4 was still the one I struggled with the most ๐Ÿ˜„

Btw, did you try the music? It's a true masterpiece... which is exactly why I had to switch it off after one level ๐Ÿ˜†

Collapse
 
webdeveloperhyper profile image
Web Developer Hyper

Yes, I checked the music. The music makes the game even more exciting! ๐ŸŽต๐ŸŽถ

Collapse
 
hemapriya_kanagala profile image
Hemapriya Kanagala

Daniel, this was a fun read. There is something satisfying about bringing an old project back to life and seeing what still holds up years later. Looks like those last 7% of Copilot tokens went to a good cause ๐Ÿ˜„

Collapse
 
gramli profile image
Daniel Balcarek

Thank you, Iโ€™m glad you liked it!

Yep, probably the best use of my last 7% of Copilot tokens. ๐Ÿ˜… It was fun to migrate it and even more fun to play it again after all these years!

Collapse
 
sylwia-lask profile image
Sylwia Laskowska

Thanks. Now, instead of working, I'm playing Easter Game ๐Ÿ˜„ And I suspect I'm not the only one.

I just hope those few stickers were worth the destruction of the entire IT industry ๐Ÿ˜‚

Collapse
 
gramli profile image
Daniel Balcarek

Yesterday I couldn't finish level 4, so I ended up spending about 20 minutes playing it myself ๐Ÿ˜„๐Ÿ˜„

Looks like the plan is working. One developer at a time, I will destroy them all! ๐Ÿ˜ˆ๐Ÿ˜‚

Collapse
 
kyej_dev profile image
Kye Jones

This was such a fun read. I love the idea of using your last bit of Copilot tokens to revive an old university project instead of starting something new from scratch.

Thereโ€™s something really cool about looking back at old code and realising younger you actually made some solid architecture choices. Also, porting a WinForms puzzle game to the browser while keeping the original feel is a great use of AI as an assistant, not the whole builder.

Do you think youโ€™ll keep adding levels to it now that itโ€™s alive again?

Collapse
 
gramli profile image
Daniel Balcarek

Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it! ๐Ÿ˜Š

If the game gets some natural traffic and people enjoy it, then why not? Creating puzzle levels is a lot of fun and it would be nice to give this old project a bit more life after all these years.

Collapse
 
abid_turi_e462a06b39c1fa8 profile image
Abid Turi

Ngl, such a nice game <3

Collapse
 
gramli profile image
Daniel Balcarek

Thanks! I'm glad you like it ๐Ÿ˜Š

Collapse
 
technogamerz profile image
๐•‹๐•™๐•– ๐•ƒ๐•’๐•ซ๐•ช ๐”พ๐•š๐•ฃ๐•

Very enjoyable ๐Ÿ˜Š

Collapse
 
gramli profile image
Daniel Balcarek

Oh, thanks! ๐Ÿ˜Š I'm glad that such an old game is getting so much positive feedback. ๐Ÿ˜„