At the time recorded in the video, the tool stack I needed for my personal AI game project cost less than RMB 400 a month. That number reflects my workflow, subscription choices, and usage intensity at that moment — it is not a fixed price for everyone.
People often ask what it really costs to make a game with AI — whether you have to burn a fortune in tokens. The answer is probably not what you'd expect: I didn't use anything exotic, and I didn't burn tokens at all. Plain subscriptions covered everything. Here's exactly how it breaks down.
Code, art, and music — every essential AI subscription together comes to under RMB 400 a month, cheaper than buying traditional art assets.
Cursor, $20 / month
Let me put this plainly: don't underestimate Cursor. To this day it's still the best AI tool I use. It's easy to sign up for, easy to pay for, and stable — no bans — which alone puts it ahead of a lot of tools. The subscription covers every major model, and once you run out of quota there's still a fallback model I've basically never managed to exhaust. And I'm writing UE's C++, which is supposed to be some of the harder code to get right.
One aggregator, plus a secret weapon
For art I subscribe to an aggregator called Flyne — images and video both, $20 a month. The nice thing about an aggregator is that you're not locked into picking "the best" model; you just try them all, with no fear of getting banned. For this game I use Banana Pro for stills and Kling for frame sequences — Kling has first/last-frame control, which matters a lot for my pipeline, and it's relatively cheap and consistent.
The most important AI for game art — and one I almost never see anyone mention — is actually Photoshop's AI. Its image generation is worse than any dedicated AI tool, but it has one killer feature: it lets you stop gacha-rolling. Once you're using it, you don't keep re-rolling for the exact image in your head — you just take the best parts of the few images you already have and composite them together. That's why I rarely need to re-roll. I could ship this game with zero other AI tools, but not without Photoshop. I used a third-party subscription channel at the time, where accounts and purchase methods changed often. This is therefore a personal historical cost, not Adobe's current official price: about RMB 360 per quarter, or roughly RMB 120 per month.
Suno, $10 / month — no continuous subscription needed
Music is the cheapest part. I use Suno, $10 a month, and I don't need to subscribe continuously. As of this page's update date, Suno says songs made on a paid plan retain commercial-use rights after cancellation; that does not guarantee copyright protection, and the current terms and local law still apply. I can therefore subscribe for one month, make the music in one focused pass, and amortize that month across the project.
Every essential AI tool, under RMB 400 a month
| Purpose | Tool | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Code | Cursor Pro Plan | $20 / mo |
| Art (images + video) | Flyne | $20 / mo |
| Art (compositing, fewer re-rolls) | Photoshop AI | ~¥120 / mo |
| Music | Suno (as needed) | $10 / mo, amortized |
| Total essential AI | Under ¥400 / mo | |
Scope note: “Under RMB 400 per month” is the actual monthly-equivalent recorded in my 2026-07-08 video, not a recalculation using today's public list prices and live exchange rate. Cursor and Flyne were continuous subscriptions at the time; Photoshop reflects the channel I actually paid through; Suno was opened only for focused music-production periods and amortized across the project. Dollar charges, payment channels, and exchange costs vary, so the table is a dated first-person record—not a universal budget.
Add it up, and this is cheaper than buying traditional art assets the old way. Making a game doesn't require burning a fortune in tokens. Those "one prompt and AI instantly spends thousands" clips aren't inevitable — people make them because that kind of video gets views, it's entertainment. Nobody actually shipping a game burns money like that.
Three lessons on spending less
- 01Plan the project well from day one.Not just how to involve AI and lean into its strengths — cost is a design constraint too. Sometimes switching toolchains or approaches drops the cost immediately.
- 02Match the payment model to how you actually use it.If you're learning and using AI continuously, I'd strongly suggest subscriptions; paying per API call suits low-frequency, well-bounded work — and turn off any "charge for overage" toggle so it doesn't quietly bill you.
- 03Let go of your attachment to a fixed result.What AI generates won't always match what you pictured. Treat it as an assistant and you'll scold it, fight it, re-roll endlessly; treat it as a creative partner and you'll ask "okay, how do we adjust from here" — which goes much smoother.
Doing the same work for less money — I think that's one of the most important individual skills of the AI era.