Claude for Games

Make a side-scrolling platformer in the spirit of the great 1990 console platformers, starring an original hero: a sea lion pup from Pier 39 in San Francisco. Everything is original: characters, art, level design and music, with no names, sprites or tunes from any existing game. Movement is the whole game, so tune it carefully: walk and run with momentum, skid on turnaround, a run meter that fills at top speed and, when full, lets the pup take off in a short flight; variable-height jumps, coyote time and jump buffering. Stomp enemies (crabs that walk, gulls that swoop, hermit crabs whose shells you can kick to slide and knock out others), and hit blocks from below for coins and a power-up that grants that flight. A world map of San Francisco connects four short levels by paths you walk between: the docks, the Lombard Street switchbacks, a foggy Golden Gate Park, and a run across cable car rooftops that ends with a boss. Each level ends with a goal you leap through for bonus points. Pixel art drawn in code from string sprite maps on Canvas 2D at a fixed low resolution, scaled up crisply, with parallax backgrounds and a camera that leads the player. Synthesize the music and effects with Web Audio on square and triangle waves. Keyboard (arrows or WASD, Z or Space to jump, X to run), gamepad, and on-screen touch buttons on a phone; a title screen, lives, coins and score, and world map progress saved in localStorage. Done means it boots to the title screen at 60 fps with zero console errors, every level can be finished, and it plays with touch on a phone in landscape. Single self-contained HTML file, no external libraries or assets.

Make a turn-based roguelike: escape from Alcatraz during a storm. Each floor is a procedurally generated cell block with rooms, corridors, locked doors, a key and the stairs up, seeded so a seed number replays the same run. Shadowcasting field of view with fog of war, guards that patrol and chase when they see you, rats in the walls, and the warden waiting on the top floor. Bump to fight, a small inventory (keys, a lockpick, a smoke bomb, stale bread that heals), a message log, and permadeath with a screen that tells you how you died. On boot, run a self-test: generate one thousand floors from consecutive seeds and use a breadth-first search to check that the stairs are reachable and that every key can be reached before its door; show the count in a panel that turns green when all one thousand pass, then start the run. Tiles drawn in code on Canvas 2D in a stormy palette of slate, sea green and lamp yellow, crisp at any scale, with rain and lightning flashes. Web Audio for footsteps, doors, hits and thunder. Keyboard (arrows, WASD or vi keys); on a phone, swipe to move and tap to wait. Done means it opens to the self-test turning green and then a playable floor at 60 fps with zero console errors, and it plays with touch on a phone in portrait. Single self-contained HTML file, no external libraries or assets.

Make a slingshot physics game with its own rigid-body engine written from scratch: boxes, planks and circles with mass, friction, restitution and rotation, a fixed 120 Hz timestep, contact manifolds solved with warm-started sequential impulses so tall stacks stand still instead of jittering, and bodies that go to sleep. The setting is a San Francisco pier: pull back the slingshot and launch sourdough rounds at towers of crates and planks that shelter the seagulls who stole your fries; knock every gull off to clear the level. Twelve hand-built levels of rising difficulty, a dotted trajectory preview while aiming, up to three stars per level for using fewer shots, and splinter and feather particles on impact. Before level one unlocks, run a stability self-test: a stack of ten boxes must come to rest within two seconds and stay within one pixel of where it settled for five more; show the result on the loading screen. Flat Canvas 2D shapes in warm wood, cream and bay blue, no gradients or glows. Web Audio for the stretch, the launch, wood knocks and gull squawks. Mouse or touch to aim, R to retry, best stars per level in localStorage. Done means it boots to the level select at 60 fps with zero console errors, the self-test passes, and every level can be cleared on a laptop and a phone. Single self-contained HTML file, no external libraries or assets.

Make a 3D arcade racer in WebGL2, written from scratch with no engine: a downhill time trial over the hills of San Francisco. Build the city procedurally: a grid of steep streets where the car goes airborne over every crest and lands with a squash of the suspension, rows of Victorian houses, parked cars, cable car tracks, fog banks, and the bay at the bottom. One checkpoint race from Nob Hill down to the Embarcadero against the clock, with a ghost car replaying your best run. Car physics with grip and a handbrake drift, and a chase camera whose field of view widens with speed. Flat-shaded low-poly geometry, simple directional lighting, distance fog and a late-afternoon sun; render at a lower internal resolution when frames run long to hold 60 fps. Web Audio engine sound synthesized from the RPM, plus tire squeal and landing thumps. Speedometer, timer and checkpoint splits in large type, a start screen, and best time plus ghost in localStorage. Keyboard (arrows or WASD, space for the handbrake), gamepad, and on a phone on-screen pedals with a steering slider. No lens flares, no bloom, no purple. Done means it boots to the start screen at 60 fps with zero console errors or WebGL warnings and the race can be driven on a laptop and a phone. Single self-contained HTML file, no external libraries or assets.