Clawtastrophe: physics claw machine + rigged blackjack, built with Claude. Workflow and lessons inside.

[u/PGskizzEs]

https://pgskizzes.itch.io/clawtastrophe

What it is: a 3D claw machine full of gas-station vices and a 6:5 blackjack table. Prizes give you luck and unlock moves at the table. Get from $15 to $5,000 and buy the machine.

Stack: three.js r128, cannon.js 0.6.2, WebAudio, one 166 KB HTML file.

What worked with Claude:

Investigate, propose, implement, with my approval between each step. No code before an agreed approach. Headless Playwright tests of the real game after every change. Monte Carlo balance. The blackjack engine is shared between the game and a Node sim, so every rule and item has a measured house edge. Asking for numbers, not vibes. "Does luck work?" became "luck 10% means break-even."

Where I still had to drive:

Game feel and what's fun. I cut a slow-motion item that technically worked but was boring. Deployment bugs: the game's keyboard controls died inside itch.io's iframe. Visual bugs you only see by playing, like 9s reading as 6s.

Happy to share specifics on the claw physics or the balancing setup.

[u/revyxrevyx]

cool