Spielerando

Make a Game With Claude Code: Your First Evening

To make a game with Claude Code, install it, open an empty folder and ask for the smallest version of your game that you can play tonight. You need a paid Claude plan for this, because the free plan does not include Claude Code.

The prices and commands here come from the official pages as of 2 November 2026.

What do I need before I start?

  • A plan. Pro costs $20 a month, or $17 a month on a yearly bill. Max starts at $100 a month.
  • A way to run it. The desktop app includes Claude Code, so you can skip the terminal. If you prefer a terminal, this installs it on Mac or Linux:
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

On Windows, open PowerShell and run irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex. Then open a new terminal window, make a folder for your game, go into it and type claude. It asks you to log in the first time.

  • One game idea that fits in two sentences. A big idea can wait until your second project.

Should the first game run in a browser?

Yes, unless you have a strong reason. A browser game needs no engine, and Claude Code can start it by itself and read what goes wrong.

One evening, step by step

Here is how an evening could go with Pigeon Post, an invented game: you fly a pigeon over rooftops, grab a letter and drop it at the right house, while a cat waits on one of the roofs.

19:00. Set up. Install, open the folder and start Claude Code. Send the text from the next section.

19:10. The drawing. Before any code, Claude Code writes a diagram of the game into a file, so the drawing survives tomorrow's session. It uses Mermaid, text that becomes a picture at mermaid.live. Cheap mistakes get found here.

19:20. The ugly version. Your first goal is a grey square that flies and a yellow square to reach. No art or sound yet, because you are finding out whether moving around feels good.

20:00. One rule per message. Add letters. Then the right house. Then the cat. Ask for all three at once and you will not know which one broke the game.

20:45. Save. Ask Claude Code to save this version with Git, a tool that keeps every saved version so you can go back. Do this each time the game works.

21:00. Play and stop. Play for ten minutes and note three things that annoyed you.

If the flying feels stiff, look at how good movement is built. After the first evening, the setup guide shows how to give it notes it reads each time. Spielerando can add to that: through an MCP connection it hands your AI blueprints, ready-made code and a wiki. It needs a free account with Google or e-mail, and it does not look at your game or code (how to connect).

Paste this to your AI

We are starting a small game called Pigeon Post in this empty folder. The player flies a pigeon over rooftops, picks up a letter and drops it at the right house. A cat on one roof ends the run.

First ask me up to five questions about how it should feel. Then, before any code, write game-flow.md with a Mermaid diagram of every situation the game can be in and what moves it to the next: flying, carrying, delivered, caught, new run. Walk through it, look for dead ends and arrows that can never happen, fix them and show me the diagram.

Build the smallest playable version from that file, in a browser, using plain shapes and no pictures. Keep the file up to date when the game changes.

When you tell me something is done, also tell me what you did to find out: the command you ran, what it printed, and which file and line holds each rule. "The code looks right" is not enough. If you could not run something, write "not run" and tell me what to try by hand.

Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP

How to check it worked

  • Start it yourself. Follow its instructions. Any step it left out goes back to it.
  • Drop the letter at the wrong house. Nothing good should happen, and the letter should not vanish.
  • Touch the cat while carrying a letter. The run should end, and the next run should start clean.
  • Find a number. Ask where the flying speed is set, open that place and change it. If the game does not change, the answer was wrong.
  • Start a new session tomorrow. Ask what the game does when you miss a house. It should answer from game-flow.md.

Sources

Last updated: 2026-11-02