Riverland Yards: The Muster, a Browser-Based 3D Game Built with AI, Inspired by a Farming Childhood
- Client
- Self-initiated demo, built for the Connect Waikato event, 8 July 2026
- Industry
- Interactive Media & Video Game Development
- Challenge
- Build a fully playable 3D browser game in time for a live speaking event — something that could show, not just explain, what AI-assisted development actually looks like. Not a slideshow. A real game that could be projected in front of a room full of people and speak for itself.
- Solution
- A fully self-contained 3D browser game built with AI as a core part of the development process. The player rides a black-and-white horse mustering eight cattle into the yards across a rain-soaked Wairarapa riverland farm, drawn from Longcloud founder Nick Foley's memories of helping out on his uncle's farm. A second phase sends the player on foot to chase down a rogue ewe before she reaches the river.
- Delivered on time for a live audience of 150 to 200 people at Connect Waikato.
- Rob the AV guy pulled it up on his laptop and threw it onto the projector — the whole room watched Nick muster cattle in real time.
- A personal story turned into something you could project to a crowd.
- A working demonstration of AI-assisted development that showed rather than told.
Play the Game
Use WASD or arrow keys to move. Click the game to capture mouse input.
The Challenge
On 8 July 2026, Longcloud founder Nick Foley spoke at Connect Waikato, a gathering of business owners and operators from across the region MC'd by Paul Singh. The event theme was Human Connection in an AI World: what AI can actually do, what it changes about how products get built, and what that means for businesses who want to stay ahead. Nick wanted to show rather than tell.
Show, don't tell
Slides about AI capability are easy to make and easy to forget. The demonstration had to be something real — a game Rob the AV guy could throw onto a projector in front of 150 people — not a deck about what AI can do.
A hard deadline
The event date set the constraints. Build something real, build it fast, and make sure it holds up on a projector in front of a crowd.
Specific, not generic
A generic farm game wouldn't have made the point. It needed to feel like a specific place — the right species of bush in the gullies, cattle that moved the way real cattle move under pressure from a horse, the particular texture of a Wairarapa afternoon. Nick's childhood gave the game that detail.
Honest about the process
Nick needed to speak honestly about what AI-assisted development actually looked like — where it accelerated things, where human judgement still mattered, what it actually feels like to build something with an AI as your collaborator.
The Solution
The game was built ground-up using AI throughout the development process — not just for writing code, but for thinking through architecture, tuning behaviour, and getting the atmosphere right.
Phase one: the muster
The player rides a black-and-white horse to muster eight cattle into the yards across a rain-soaked Wairarapa riverland farm. The terrain is generated mathematically rather than painted by hand, so the river channel, the mud near the yards, and the ATV track all feel like they belong to the same piece of land.
Native bush, placed correctly
Mānuka across the flats, cabbage trees on the ridgeline, ponga in the gullies, tōtara on the higher ground — placed following real ecological logic. It's not decoration. It's what makes the world feel like a particular corner of New Zealand rather than somewhere invented.
Live cattle behaviour
The cattle run a live behaviour model: they respond to pressure from the horse, hold together as a mob, avoid the river, feel the fence, and only funnel toward the gate when the player has actually earned it. Get them in, and they settle. They stop moving. They've accepted their fate.
Phase two: the rogue ewe
Once the gate swings shut, the player dismounts and the second phase begins. A ewe grazes peacefully nearby until you get too close — then she runs for the river with jinks and a burst of panic speed. There's always one.
Atmosphere built in code
Rain falls around the camera with a wind offset. Breath appears in the cold. Fog pulls the horizon in. There are no texture files, no audio files, no external assets beyond a CDN-hosted 3D library. Everything is geometry and colour.
One file, works anywhere. That's what makes it completely self-contained — open the file in a browser and it runs. That simplicity was a deliberate choice: if you're showing what AI can build, the result should be something anyone can open without needing to understand how it works.
How It Works
Stack: Three.js r128, vanilla JavaScript, single HTML file. Deployed via GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Workers.
No build step, no bundler, no server
The entire game ships as a single HTML file with no external assets beyond a CDN-hosted Three.js library. Open it in a browser and it runs. That simplicity made it deployable on Rob's laptop, projectable in front of a crowd, and shareable with a single link.
Procedural terrain
The landscape is generated mathematically from a heightmap and a set of ecological rules, not painted by hand. The river channel, the mud near the yards, the ridgeline scrub — all placed by code following the logic of how a real piece of Wairarapa land is organised.
Instanced vegetation rendering
Hundreds of individual plants — each species placed according to its correct microhabitat — are rendered efficiently using Three.js instanced meshes, so the scene holds frame rate even on a laptop being used as an AV device.
Boids-based cattle AI
The cattle mob uses a boids-style behaviour model: separation, cohesion, alignment, and pressure response. They move the way real cattle move under a horse — together, mostly, with the occasional split that has to be gathered back.
AI as collaborator throughout
AI handled large portions of the implementation — terrain generation, instanced vegetation rendering, the cattle behaviour model, the atmospheric systems — while Nick directed the creative decisions, the ecological detail, and the feel of the thing. The development process itself was part of what Nick demonstrated at Connect Waikato.
Deployed for instant access
The game is hosted via GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Workers so it's reachable from any device with a browser. The event audience could pull it up on their phones while watching it on the projector.
What's next: Sound is the biggest thing missing — a rain loop, hoofbeats in the mud, the clunk of the gate. All achievable with the Web Audio API, no files needed. A heading dog with whistle commands, camera shake on the gallop, and puddle reflections are on the list. The architecture supports all of it.
Results & Impact
- Delivered a fully playable 3D browser game on time for a live audience of 150 to 200 people.
- Rob the AV guy pulled it up on his laptop and put it on the projector — the room watched Nick muster cattle in real time.
- A personal story from a Wairarapa childhood turned into something you could project to a crowd.
- A working demonstration of AI-assisted development that showed rather than told, at a room full of business owners.
- A single-file game with no build step, no bundler and no server that runs anywhere with a browser.
Technology
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