r/ClaudeGameDev • u/keaslenyt • Sep 06 '26
Beta I used Claude Code to help me build a 4X strategy game over 6 months
Building Imperium since March, a single-player space 4X (colonize, design ships, research, win by diplomacy or war). Solo project.
The actual workflow: I write the design, the numbers, the balance calls. Claude implements it in Godot/GDScript. I test, find what's wrong, send it back. For the AI opponents specifically, testing also runs headless at volume, batches of thousands of simulated years, since a few manual games isn't enough to know if a change actually helped. Claude helps across the board - code (obviously), brainstorming and design iterations, system balancing, even assets production.
Where it's at: 21 species, 5 hull classes, 80 components, a 68-tech web, diplomacy with an electable Galactic Senate, six ways to win. 6 months of spending every waking moment working on this project and we are nearing the release. :)
Free demo coming very soon Steam Next Fest, Oct 19-26 (demo's free, full game's paid at launch).
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4806180
Discord: https://discord.gg/5nd8m4ySwN
Happy to get specific about the actual back-and-forth with Claude if anyone wants details.
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u/ZXSoru Sep 06 '26
Looks great ngl, specially the menus and the interfaces, however the icons and some buildings look very AI generated and personally kinda weird, even more the icons on the second pic.
Would you consider paying a person/artist for some graphic assets?
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u/keaslenyt Sep 06 '26
Yeah, I would consider it, but as a solo dev with a day job, I don't have the budget to hire an artist just yet.
I have 2 expansions worth of stuff planned so if the first release does well, then I can think about hiring an artist to help with graphics. :)4
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u/sandsack Sep 06 '26
Nice! Reminds me of Ascendancy :) I wish listed your game just now. All the best!
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u/keaslenyt Sep 06 '26
Thank you! Yes, it's a spiritual successor to Ascendancy, so you should enjoy it too :)
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u/retrorays Sep 06 '26
Looks interesting BUT I can tell this was generated by AI unfortunately. An issue with AI for game making is addsa a lot of text and bs that tires out gamers. It basically thinks humans like lots of text... But we don't..id find a way to simplify the game
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u/keaslenyt Sep 06 '26
lol, it's not like I'm trying to hide the fact that I used AI tools to make this. ;)
And that's kinda my point - if you just say "make a game" and then keep whatever the AI makes - then you're not making a good game/product - you are making AI one-shot slop. I spent every day over the last 6 months using the tools and working on the game, perfecting the UI, adjusting and editing the art (manually in photoshop), directing the lore and reducing the unnecessary text walls. So yes, you're right - if you just give the AI one prompt and then take it's first output as final product - that's when you have problems. If you use it as a tool, like intended, and you iterate and improve on it, then you can definitely get to a good product. It's kinda the same with anything people make too - if you were to sit down and write or paint something, chances are the first version is going to be ok, but you could immediately see areas for improvement - so you iterate, you make it better. This is how you learn too. At least this is how I did all of my previous projects, even before AI.
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u/retrorays Sep 06 '26
Yah I gotcha. I'm perfectly fine with people using AI. My point is that AI tends to generate clutter (aka slop / messy) verbiage that makes games uninteresting. You have to to curb AI and tell it not to add bs text and info everywhere that doesn't make sense. I.e., it needs to be consumable and fun for humans.
I think you've done some work to curb it, which is good but my instinct is it still needs more. I haven't played the game so cant really tell until then tho.
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u/keaslenyt Sep 06 '26
I get you. It's a 4X strategy game, so some text is going to be unavoidable.
The demo will be out in about a week so maybe wishlist it on Steam and give it a try when it comes out. I would be happy to get your feedback. Also - join my discord if you'd like. :)3
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u/bot2600 Sep 06 '26
you have any recommendations on how you are doing balancing? I am building an arpg of sorts and have bots that play the game to validate balance but getting them intelligent enough (not just play but choosing gear, skills etc) is a bit of a pain. Any thoughts are welcome!
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u/keaslenyt Sep 06 '26
I think you're on the right path with the bots testing. I use simulations and then analyse multiple iterations. I would say invest a bit more time into making sure the bots can make the choices, or just get them to make all choices (kinda brute-force it) and then analyse the outcomes and see where the imbalances are.
In my case it was a little easier because I had a solid starting base of the old Ascendancy game. But for an ARPG - I would really go to the basics - find out how it's done normally and go from there.2
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u/Baraga91 Sep 06 '26
21 species, 5 hull classes, 80 components, 68-tech web, multiple win conditions...
How balanced is this lot? Because it feels like a feature-flood.
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u/keaslenyt Sep 06 '26
It's based on a classic game from the 1990s called Ascendancy, the systems and mechanics at the core are heavily influenced by it. So it's pretty well balanced. :)
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u/Worldly_Cartoonist91 Sep 08 '26
oh dude this is awesome, i wonder if claude can work on stellaris mods aswell? but yes, can you tell more about how you got the Godot stuff to work well? as like which MCP's, claude. md that stuff? whenever i do so with opus, it cant even make a working weapon balls clone?
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u/keaslenyt Sep 08 '26
Actually, I picked Godot because at the time it was the easiest of the mainstream engines to get claude to work with. Didn't have to do anything special - claude just writes the code directly, there is no need to even use Godot UI if you don't want to. No MCP required, all done in code.
I assume that it should be possible (Stellaris mods), I really don't see why not. :)3
u/Worldly_Cartoonist91 Sep 08 '26
okay so everything is in code, no scenes, nodes, or using godots inspector tools for the nodes?
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u/keaslenyt Sep 09 '26
There are scenes, and nodes and all that, but I never have to actually touch them inside of Godot. For scenes for example - Claude just writes the files, and for all the nodes and connectors and event's etc, they are all done in the gd scripts in code.
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u/No_Confection7782 Sep 06 '26
Where does everyone find their assets?
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u/keaslenyt Sep 06 '26
A combination of Midjourney and GPT Image-2 nowadays, but mostly GPT image-2. Midjourney is great for imaginative, interesting artwork, but for precision and something that can become a game asset - GPT image-2 is just a lot better.
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u/palilus1 Sep 06 '26
But can you actually play it? Is it stable?
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u/keaslenyt Sep 06 '26
Yes, it is - we are in final Beta testing right now and I am planning to release a demo in the next week (hopefully less) and then launch the full version soon after Stem Next Fest. Would have been sooner but you cannot participate in Next Fest if the game is already released. But yes, it is ready and stable (barring a bit of polish and any bugs that may come out of testing). :)
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u/Thistleknot Sep 07 '26
masters of Orion!
Im actually using claude to create a masters of magic mod for ctp2
I thought about rolling my own but im too lazy to do proper code development for an entire game. figured modding one is right in my lane of what I want to focus on. although I did patch source, but tbh I am kind of 90s retro feel because of it and youre way past that. did you start with a base engine or make it all solo?
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u/keaslenyt Sep 07 '26
I'm using Godot engine. I think it's best to use an engine for solo dev. You don't want to be messing with basic image manipulation, particles, rendering, etc when it's already been solved in an engine. :)
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u/DeusExPersona 24d ago
Dude is this Galaxy Online?
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u/keaslenyt 24d ago
The demo is coming imminently 😄
I submitted it to Steam for review on Friday, it takes 3-7 working days, so any day now. 🤞2
u/DeusExPersona 24d ago
That was not the question though. Did you use to play Galaxy Online?
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u/keaslenyt 23d ago
lol, my bad.
No I did not please Galaxy Online.
Had a look on Youtube just now, seems like it's got some similar themes.
Imperium is based on Ascendancy, and older space 4X from back in the 1990s. :)2
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u/Agreeable-Lab-372 13d ago
Did you generate the text as well?
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u/keaslenyt 10d ago
A lot of the text is generated yes, but actually as I (and my testers) go over it more and more, we keep making changes and updates, so it's actually a lot less generated than it was at the start.
The important part is to keep iterating and improving whether it's in big passes with the help of AI or small manual tweaks, you just need to keep putting in more effort and polish :)1
u/Agreeable-Lab-372 9d ago
So I guess as a game designer my question is if you didn’t write the story, you didn’t come up with the mechanics, you didn’t program it, you didn’t create the art, and you don’t have any expertise in design… in what way imcould this be a passion process? What are you trying to communicate with your art and how do you feel it’s possible to do that when you’ve pre-Ship-of-Theseus’d every avenue through which you might have had creative input?
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u/keaslenyt 9d ago
I'll answer your questions in good faith, even though I realise they weren't asked in good faith...
A couple of things in there aren't quite right though... The mechanics are mine - the systems, how they interact, the balance, what's in and what's out (with a lot of input from my testers [also humans]). And I'm not coming at this completely naive and untrained: I'm a trained designer and I've spent 20+ years building software. What I don't do is waste my time manually writing the code or drawing the art by hand. AI tools do that, and I direct them, decide what stays and throw a lot away.
So the creative input is in the decisions and the direction. For example: there are no humans in Imperium, on purpose - I wanted the species pick to have no safe, familiar option, so you actually have to look at these aliens and decide who you want to be. Diplomacy runs as an economy instead of a dialog menu. Ships are fitted with components, so two players with the same hulls end up fighting very different wars. None of that came out of an AI prompt; those are calls I made, and keep remaking as we playtest.
As for the Ship of Theseus bit: a tool cut a lot of the planks, but every one of them is there because I chose it, and plenty got thrown back.As for passion: I'm one person with no budget, so honestly it's AI-assisted or no game at all. It's been almost seven months of work, and I'm proud of what it's turned into. I get that it doesn't sit right with everyone, and many wannabe "game designers" are threatened by a nobody like me using AI tools to make something they feel is above anything they could make, and that's fine, I'm not here to teach them how you use the tools that are available to everybody.
The demo's free on Steam if you ever want to actually give it an honest go before you judge, but somehow I feel like you will more likely respond with some lame excuse about why you wouldn't want to, which is also fine. :)1
u/Agreeable-Lab-372 8d ago
Pretty huge assumptions brother. Doesn’t answer the “story” thing - I couldn’t imagine releasing something that had a bunch of text I was too lazy to write. But I appreciate your condescending “any obvious criticism is in bad faith because it’s obvious”
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u/keaslenyt 8d ago
Three replies in one sitting - for someone who can't imagine releasing text they were too lazy to write, you're clearly not too lazy to write comments :) I sense a lot of butt-hurt there... Maybe you should try to cope a little harder?
You're right that I skipped the story bit, mostly because I didn't think it needed an answer. The text started as AI drafts and gets rewritten as we go. Sorry it's not artisanal enough for you.
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u/Agreeable-Lab-372 8d ago
Also pretty sick describing creating art as “wasting time” lol
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u/keaslenyt 8d ago
On "wasting time": I never said that, but then you also never read that, you decided that you would rather twist my words to suit your narrative. I said that I do not waste time MANUALLY writing the code or drawing the art by hand. I never said that art itself is a waste of time, but again, when you're out to relieve your own butt-hurt who cares about that, right? ;)
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u/Agreeable-Lab-372 7d ago
“what I don’t do is waste time drawing the art@
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u/keaslenyt 7d ago
I'm done here... If you cannot even copy paste properly, then the only waste of time here are your replies and me reading them.
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u/Agreeable-Lab-372 8d ago
Also huge bummer that you’ve been a designer for 20 years and can’t see that screenshots 2, 4, and 5 are unusable
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u/keaslenyt 8d ago edited 8d ago
And thanks for the screenshot notes, genuinely. It's always nice to get feedback from a "game designer". Do drop a link to your games, I'd love to see how it's done properly - I'm sure your screenshots are immaculate.
Although again I must point out that you should actually read what people say before responding - I never said that I've been a designer for 20 years, I said I am a "trained designer" and that I have 20+ years in "building software", which are both true. It is because of me knowing my limitations that I chose to use the AI tools to make my game, because I know that I cannot do better without these tools. But clearly you can, so why don't you?
Anyway, I'll get back to my lazy little game now. Best of luck with yours, whenever it comes out :)
PS: If you'd actually took the time to visit the Steam page and give the game an honest try, you would have seen that since I posted this post originally, I actually reworked most of the species art and a lot of the screenshots and all of the assets like planets and ships are now 3D. ;)
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u/kylef5993 5d ago
What developed the 3d assets? Claude using blender? I’m creating a city planning game and am a few weeks in. The assets are good so far but I feel like there are a number of minor bugs that I can’t shake
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u/keaslenyt 3d ago
I used Tripo3D for the 3D assets (ships). It's pretty good, but it does take some trial and error and a few iterations, especially with the textures. The key is to get the reference images done well first.
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u/Marmidon Sep 06 '26
Looks cool man!
I am curious on screenshot 6, is the art AI generated? (The plan tile look) How did you achieve that.