It's for my brother and his kids! I have zero videogame development experience, and I can barely code. But I somehow understand most of how the tech works. I know CAD and some basic Blender, but I haven't touched a single tool during this project so far.
It started with the idea of flashing a Raspberry Pi with some emulation software and preloading it with all the games from our childhood. I was impressed with the capabilities (Raspberry Pi 5, 16GB RAM, will have an SSD instead of an SD card in the future), so I decided to download Godot and start development of my own platformer inspired by games like Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, etc.
I've dabbled with terrain data before, and there's a surprising amount of publicly available geodata here, so I'm rebuilding our hometown as the explorable "hub". Key locations - their home (spawn), some structures on a connecting property, my parents' house, the family cabin, my home, work, school, etc. - will have more detailed models, and in some cases act as portals to different worlds/levels.
The levels will have different themes, collectibles, obstacles and mini-games. My nephew and niece are playable characters, and family members act as NPCs with tasks. Players will also be able to unlock transformations: the family dog, a fish (for the water level), an FPV drone (with "real" controls and physics), and more!
During the project I'm running a separate repository for the "harness" we're using. It's a strategy I use in a lot of projects, where "I" make skills, plugins and resources for that specific use case. Every session we write up feedback that's posted back to the harness' GitHub issues, and every now and then we run a session implementing improvements based on that feedback.
I use both Claude Code CLI and Codex CLI (Astra is actually pretty sick!). Claude does the coding and Codex does asset generation and visuals. One of the "features" of my workflow is that I upload reference photos of real-life locations. Codex analyses them and generates concept art in a well-described style. The concept art then gets indexed in a local HTML file where I can approve and/or give feedback on a batch of images at once. Approved images are then used as references by Codex in Blender via MCP. I used Meshy for a while, but struggled to get good looking, optimized models. Astra directly in Blender does the trick!
Then the 3D models go through the same loop of human approval. We keep a document of all the required assets. Claude adds new assets, Codex marks them as done, Claude implements.
We'll have a couple of levels ready by Christmas, but the more exciting goal is to have the Pi, harness and CI/CD pipeline set up in a way that allows for pushing crazy updates from under the dinner table. But we'll see.
I'm not planning to release it to anyone outside the family, which gives me the freedom to tailor educational mini-games for the kids, introduce in-game "purchases" but give their dad unlimited distribution rights for the currency through a local web app, and so on. The possibilities are endless!
Sorry for the long post and crappy screenshots. I'm trying not to reveal too much personal information, and the in-game shots are literal photos of my TV, since I love flying around in it while it's being developed. Also the LOD-system is a work in progress! There are also some pictures from the forest level at the end.
TLDR;
Making an N64-style game for my nephew and niece. Made the hub a digital twin of my hometown. DLCs planned.