People ask what it costs to ship a small game with AI tooling. For Lunar Rescue the answer is boring in a good way: a Cursor subscription for the build window, plus the usual Apple and Expo fees.
What I actually used it for
Day-to-day pairing on physics, Skia rendering, hangar UI, and audio. Cloud agent PRs for focused fixes — landing pads, grade overlay, thruster labels — that still had to pass the phone preview pipeline. Later, faster iteration on this marketing site.
I didn’t hire a contractor for lander art. I didn’t buy middleware beyond Expo’s stack. Matter.js and Skia are the engines. Cursor was the multiplier on a solo schedule.
How to read the number
Compare it to twelve focused calendar days, not a AAA budget line. The useful metric is cost per shipped system: physics feel, adaptive quality, Game Center scripts, hangar upgrades, twelve levels. The subscription was the fixed cost that made that density possible.
Your bill will differ by plan and usage. Mine was “ship the game,” not “maximize token burn.” The receipt that matters is still the soft landing on a phone.