“A small platformer: a fox hops across autumn rooftops collecting acorns before winter. Two or three short levels.”
A separate Claude Code session was the Game Director for an empty game, on the platformer template. It had Gamewright's tools and nothing else: no shell, no way to read files, no way to write code. Everything it learned came through the tools, and everything it changed was a proposal. The person decided on each one, answered briefly, and looked at the game before saying it was played.
The person’s words are quoted as they were said. The rest is what the Director did, in plain words, from the run’s own record.
“A small platformer: a fox hops across autumn rooftops collecting acorns before winter. Two or three short levels.”
Picked the platformer template and asked its three questions, each with a suggested answer: how it should feel, what the obstacles are, and whether the levels are made by hand or generated.
Nothing yet: it asked first.
“Go with those; acorns just count; about a minute a level; build the first playable stacked, with a playtest that proves every level can be finished”
Built the first playable version: the brief, the game, the fox, the crow, and three levels, Rooftop Hop, Chimney Spikes and Crow Ridge.
The fox has gravity 50, a jump of 17 and runs at 8.5 tiles a second, with coyote time (a moment's grace to jump after leaving a ledge) and jump buffering (a jump pressed just early still counts).
It flagged what it couldn't know: nobody had played it yet, the first acorn came late, and the crows had been tested on only one route.
Five proposals, each stacked on the one before.
Its playtest reached the win in 35.2 s.
Played it, then said:
“nothing on screen tells me how I'm doing; mark it played; then autumn rooftops, a fox that reads as a fox, acorns, chimneys, crows”
Added a heads-up display (hearts, the level's name, acorns) and an autumn sky for each level that darkens toward winter.
The turn hit its 40-minute limit before the Director wrote its report, but both proposals were complete and green.
Two: the heads-up display and the skies.
Both green.
“Give them real pixel-art sprites; keep the play exactly as it is”
Drew pixel art for the fox, the acorns, the crows, the den and the weathervane, and looked at each one in a preview. The acorn took three tries: “the first version read as an onion.”
It asked the engine for two things instead of faking them: sprites that change the look without changing the game's state, and animals rigged so they can be animated.
The pixel-art sprites.
Acorn Rooftops: run and jump across three rooftop levels, gather acorns, mind the chimney spikes and the crows, and reach the den. The sky darkens from an autumn afternoon toward winter as you go. The fox, acorns, crows, den and weathervane are the Director's own pixel art.
Since the run, its fox and crow have been rigged by hand to try the engine's new animation, so the fox now gallops and the crows strut. They are still the Director's drawings.
Plays on a phone or tablet too, with on-screen controls.
Each finding as the run’s write-up recorded it, and what has happened since.
Gamewright checks that a change to the look leaves play exactly as it was, by comparing fingerprints of the game's state. Sprites were part of that state, so a change to sprites alone couldn't pass.
Being fixed when the run was written up. Since then, parts that only draw, like sprites and poses, stay out of the game's state, so a sprite-only change passes.
To see level 3, the Director made a throwaway proposal that moved the fox's starting point.
Being fixed when the run was written up. Since then, a preview can go to any level, and to any place in it.
A running fox or a strutting crow needs rigged animals, which the engine didn't have.
Since then, a model can name joints and poses, and the platformer plays the clip for what a body is doing. The Director's own fox and crow were rigged, by hand and not by the Director, so they are still its drawings. The fox idles, gallops, jumps, falls and gets hurt; the crow struts. No fingerprint of the game's state moved.
The Director said so itself: “A minute per level … nobody has played it yet, so that's unproven.”
A bot now plays it as a person would, with reaction time, imprecise jumps and fumbles. Over 20 seeds, a casual player takes about 70 s for the three levels (Rooftop Hop 15 s, Chimney Spikes 22 s, Crow Ridge 34 s) and a novice about 110 s, giving up on Crow Ridge 4 times in 20. The hardest spot is the jump onto the first crow's roof: 22 of a casual player's 58 hurts on Crow Ridge. Every platformer now gets this playtest by default.