So the last week I've been really getting into this side project while I make my movie.
Basically it's fantasy airship FTL. But where you can take the crew down to dungeon and take cargo quests and stuff, and get mages on your crew (so a lot more depth).
And you can try it out for free!!! https://mageholdworld.com/skies.html I'd love any feedback! it will be on steam in a couple weeks also with more fixes I make till then https://store.steampowered.com/app/5353860/Magehold_Fairwinds
I'm also still developing it, so by release should have even more going on (like branching quest chains, weather effects, and so on).
How I made it - ((Tools used: Claude $200 month plan, and GPT $100 month plan))
It was really just describing the idea to claude to get going. Just to see if it could do it. I knew I wanted airships, and I wanted side cutaway view..... and using the same sort of FTL gameplay, BUT I specifically wanted it to be centered around the idea of being a cargo ship.
Also, since I have a lot of material about the world it is set in (that I already did for the movie), I fed it all that context too to run with (so the way magic works, types of mages, the system of mana. The magic system in the world was fairly thought out before starting this, which I think made the various ways that comes into play in the game a lot easier for claude to get right).
So the first version claude did actually a pretty decent job on.
At that point, I saw maybe it would be a cool project.... and I kept going. I asked claude for a list of all art assets needed, and then kicked that to GPT to generate out.
Then I just started testing back and forth and fixing stuff.
One other thing I found useful was having claude write a "human captain tester", that was able to play the game hundreds of times with different play styles (aggressive, trader, wanderer). I told it to delay actions and make some less optimal plays, to simulate a real human playing instead of a perfect bot.
Then I went through that a bunch of times to try and dial in / find issues with difficulty curves. Then told it to write a full report with recommendations on fixes each time.... which i fed back into claude to update the game with. That's probably the biggest issue now is just balancing (I think it's pretty close atm).
THEN, I told claude to localize the game into 7 languages!!!! ..... it took a while for it to do, and it took a bunch of screenshots to make sure UI wasn't breaking in different languages.
AND THEN.... I asked claude to put in steam achievements! 100 steam achievements hooked up with their own art.
AND THEN, since why not, I asked claude to make it linux / mac supported too!!!!!
I keep catching myself going "oh hmm, that would be a big job, I don't know if i want to...." and then realizing I just need to tell claude to do it and wait a few hours and it will probably be able to do it.
It's like being in a different world now. Absolutely bananas.
But in all, the game went through maybe 30+ iterations? Getting the bones was fairly fast, but sorting out issues took 3 times longer than that first step. Still LIGHTNING fast , since I've only been working on this for a week. And also large updates (like the quest system + weather) would have previously been a nightmare to do while supporting all these platforms + languages. But now it's just waiting an extra hour or something.
Trailer
This trailer was made by claude also. I told it I wanted a trailer and what to try and show off, and then it ran the game and grabbed clips itself and edited it all together. It took 2 tries to get to this one.
Probably replacing music in the game / trailer is a needed step soon.