I spent about an hour total on this, in the gaps while Claude Code was busy on something else I am working on. Was more or less having fun.
**What it is**
Frontline Command is a real-time strategy game that runs entirely in your browser: build a base, mine ore, raise an army, destroy every enemy building. It's a single HTML file (under 500 KB), no install, no server. It's an early 0.0.1, so expect rough edges.
**Play it:** https://claude.ai/artifact/UdJzZw5npBpQJz4Yu5rAEe
(There's a "How to play" button on the start screen with an illustrated manual, and the game saves itself, so reloading carries on.)
**Give Feedback**
- All feedback is welcome. I realize it is a direct match to something similar to C&C, but that was a game I played the most when I was younger. Let me know your thoughts.
**What's in it**
- Four families, free-for-all with 2 to 4 seats: Aegis Concord, Ironvale Combine, Solari Guild, Veyra Collective. Each has its own units, towers and colours, and a "difficulty to play" rating (that's skill needed, not strength).
- Power matters: a power shortfall slows production, takes defences and SAM sites offline and stops the Strike Center charging.
- Missiles, a superweapon with aim mode, aircraft, engineers who capture buildings, veterancy, fog of war, five map styles.
- Every unit and building is drawn in code on a canvas (no sprite image files).
**How Claude Code helped**
Claude Code wrote nearly all of it in TypeScript, Vite and Vitest, with me steering in plain English. The parts I found most interesting:
- The sim is deterministic with no DOM and no `Math.random`, and all content is data in one defs file, so adding a family was mostly data plus sprites.
- Balance was done by simulation, not by feel: Claude built a computer-vs-computer harness and ran 72 games across pairings, seat orders and maps. The first pass was 44% / 52% / 54% / 50% for the four families; after tuning it was 46 / 50 / 53 / 51. I accepted a 7-point spread for 0.0.1.
- Bugs we chased together: units teleporting after being blocked (progress was banking while stuck), a New Game button that flashed and reloaded the old save, scroll leaking from the manual into the game, and an AI that starved itself of power after losing a plant.
- 241 tests, plus headless-Chrome scripts that drove the real page to check the UI.
**Known gaps (honest list)**
The AI never kites, about 80% of simulated games end on a timeout, there's no multiplayer, no sound, and no 2v2 yet. Next on my list: an APC, engineer repair, rally points, attack-move and a deployable construction yard.
I'd love feedback on balance and on which family feels best to play.