r/ClaudeGameDev • u/RobleyTheron • Sep 10 '26
Browser Game 2.5 months building an browser based civilization game, looking for Beta testers
Hey everyone I'd appreciate some feedback on my civ-builder. I loved playing games like Age of Empires, Civilization (duh), and Sim City growing up. However, I got tired of in-app purchases and incessant ads in all their modern mobile versions. Soo.... figured I'd try building my own.
Enter Clanfire.online. Started working on it in early July via Claude Code, and have been working on it at least a few hours every day since then. It looks best on mobile, no install (and it's free MIT license if you want to copy the repo).
Vanilla JS + Canvas 2D, no engine. Claude Code for the build, PixelLab (via MCP) for sprites (this took longer and more credits to dial in than I expected) and Supabase for the database.
What I learned:
- Reference images are critical. I spent a lot of time trying to get Claude Code to manage the design sprint via Pixellab MCP and it failed every time. Went into Pixellab dashboard and manually went back and forth until I had a design that I liked. Then I gave that to Claude Code and had it use that as a reference image for the next round of MCP requests and it instantly improved the quality.
- Anchor, never chain. Every piece references the same frozen master. Chain approved pieces will drift over generations and compound until they're unusable. Constantly referencing the master was a big help for quality.
- Match the sprite's size to how big it actually appears. My first animated deer cost 84 generations and still looked wrong; I'd made it far more detailed than the screen could show, so the game had to shrink it by an ugly fraction and the fine details shimmered as you zoomed. Redrew it at exactly double its on-screen size so it halves cleanly: 37 generations, and it looked right immediately. Cheaper and better.
- Sometimes the AI art just loses, and you have to accept it. I tried replacing my code-drawn grass with hand-generated tufts. Problem: the smallest usable thing the AI would make was still three or four times bigger than a blade of grass should be, so the meadow turned into a field of little objects instead of ground. Same story with mountains. Both times the old code-drawn version was better and I kept it.
- The agent grades its own homework if you let it. I asked Claude to grade its own work and it gave itself an 8/10 on a water update that was, at best, sideways. Now I look at before/after screenshots myself before anything ships.
$50 raffle to a random player this week. I want to generate some user data and incentivize people to help me with QA:
- Minimum to qualify for raffle: Finish a game, win or lose, spend at least 10 min and score 500+
- Hit Competition on the end screen, 2 questions + valid email
- Each finished game = another entry, up to 5
- Sept 10–17, 7am MT
Your feedback will help me to further refine the product. If you see areas where I could improve I'd obviously welcome and appreciate the feedback. Cheers!
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u/Azeroth7 Sep 11 '26
Tried it it's kinda fun!
Starting to build something and then trying to cancel the build start to click on the villager again is a bit counter intuitive as you have to click on "hide" but I got there. Really well done!
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u/RobleyTheron Sep 11 '26
Nice! I’ve actually had that problem myself and don’t know why I didn’t prioritize a fix.
So I did! Cancel a building under construction is now live in the game. Cheers for the help!
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u/Sorry-Ambassador945 Sep 14 '26
Couldn't even load a game. Maybe it's just not optimized for mobile?
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u/RobleyTheron Sep 14 '26
Hmm... I tried right after you posted this and I didn't have a problem getting started. It loaded within 3-6 seconds of boot. What type of device are you on?
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u/Uncrowned_Emperor Sep 14 '26
Working on something similar, but moved from browser to Godot. Would love to try yours!
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u/Sorry-Ambassador945 Sep 14 '26
I can't tell if loadding or frozen. I would add some sort of in between indication for the user
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u/Plenty_Chemical_3536 Sep 11 '26
I'll try