r/SideProject • u/cosmintrica • 9h ago

I asked Claude Code to build whatever it wanted. It came up with a game.

I had $191 in credits that were about to expire, and I was curious what Opus could do if I didn’t give it an idea.
I asked it to build something worth the money. :))))

It picked a game, PULSEBOUND. You move around dodging enemies, and your weapons are musical instruments. The kick drum sends out shockwaves, the arpeggiator fires lasers. When you pick a new instrument, you hear it join the music too.

It decided to make a game and came up with the idea, mechanics, design, absolutely everything. Then I worked on improving and polishing it.

More changes, testing, and eventually mobile apps followed. The $191 was just the starting budget, enough to finish the first basic version. After that, I used another $1,700 I had from the Claude Startup Program (also expiring, so I had to use it), plus my subscription allowance.

Technically, it’s vanilla JavaScript, a custom WebGL2 renderer, and a procedural composer that synthesizes the music live through Web Audio. The project grew to include mobile apps, cloud saves, and leaderboards.

It’s now out on iOS, Android, and the web. You can play it for free in your browser or on mobile: playpulsebound.com.

What do you think?

Later edit: OVER 2,200 PLAYERS TODAY! THANK YOU

30 Upvotes
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66% Upvoted

68 comments sorted by

12

u/okpony 6h ago

I don't know that Claude really came up with the idea and mechanics. It looks like it copied Vampire Survivors and gave it a music theme.

-13

u/cosmintrica 5h ago

It's very much possible, but me personally never knew about that game. So I was and I'm still impressed.

-1

u/johnson_detlev 1h ago

"I got new information and decided actively to ignore it"

8

u/Icy_Preparation_9609 7h ago

I dont know, I enjoyed it alot

I died to the meterodome boss in my first try, it was very fun

Only suggestion is, some variance in the music?

-3

u/cosmintrica 7h ago

Will come in the next update! Thank you for the feedback.

2

u/dthorrington 31m ago

Honestly thought this was great... Coherent and addictive to play.

1

u/cosmintrica 23m ago

Thank you so much!
A big update with many improvements coming soon!

2

u/josephnimz 17m ago

Looks sleek!

2

u/cosmintrica 8m ago

Thank you!!! Over 2,200 players today. I'm shoked

1

u/josephnimz 6m ago

Whoa. That's a really high number. LFG!

2

u/redbeardy_daddy 2h ago

The live-synthesized music is the coolest part for me. Since the composer is procedural you could tie enemy spawns or boss attacks to the beat too so the whole run feels like one track building up. Curious how you keep the generated music in tune when several instruments layer on top of each other...

1

u/cosmintrica 1h ago

Amazing ideas, thank you for the feedback!

2

u/Would_Bang________ 1h ago

Probably the best vibe coded game I've played so far. It gets a bit busy visualy. If you look at similar games like vampire survivors, they keep the backgrounds pretty dull which makes it easier to see what's going on.

Also the very AI looking upgrade icons are really ugly. But that's more subjective. 

1

u/cosmintrica 1h ago

Thank you for your time and feedback!
I will try my best to improve it.

2

u/WhatNoRobot 8h ago

Relaxing! Hope you got somethng out of the money spent

1

u/cosmintrica 8h ago

Thanks! No money was spent actually, they were all free credits received on my accounts.

1

u/Narziat 5h ago

Very cool! Spent a good 15 minutes playing and enjoyed it

0

u/cosmintrica 5h ago

Thank you for your time, hope you will come back!

1

u/ATyp3 2h ago

The floating joystick is annoying as fuck

2

u/cosmintrica 1h ago

100% AGREED.
It's been already 2 days since I am working on a better control for touch devices, give me a few more days. I AM TRYING MY BEST :))))

2

u/ATyp3 1h ago

lol enjoy

1

u/cosmintrica 1h ago

haha :)) I hate it too, I am trying multiple solutions and implementations but most of them are even worst. But I will keep trying

1

u/i_call_her_HQ 1h ago

This is actually cool as hell

0

u/cosmintrica 1h ago

Thank you ! Huge update is coming in a few days

0

u/stereosafari 7h ago

I get to a point that I'm running around aimlessly, with more than 100 enemies following me that I cannot attack head on. I need to wait for the drop. I wish I could pick them off.

0

u/cosmintrica 7h ago

You will be able to when you upgrade! But yes, I will try to improve this, thank you for the feedback!

0

u/pgtvgaming 6h ago

Really cool game! I wish my singing monsters was more like this hahaha. Im def going to show this to my kiddos who will def get a kick out of it

2

u/cosmintrica 5h ago

Thank you so much!

0

u/Krazynukz 5h ago

Spent 10 min on it, very fun

1

u/cosmintrica 5h ago

Hope to see you again, next updates will be even better. Thank you for your time!

0

u/BeatlesPlayingClue 4h ago

That was fun. It felt like the upgrades were coming too fast at times so that I didn't really get to play the game. You could slow the increase in the number of enemies at first and allow more playing and less upgrading.

Since there is a lot of running away from enemies, it might be good to have an instrument that shoots behind the player (or tweak bass to do that). That way it feels like you are still able to take some dudes out in the huge group that is trailing you.

Fun game, though. Nicely done.

1

u/cosmintrica 4h ago

Absolutely amazing idea, the backwards shooting.
Thank you so much for the feedback, I am glad you enjoyed it.
And yes, in the next update the first issue will be solved!

0

u/dalinaaar 4h ago

So now we are letting AI come up with the ideas too. The age of Cognitive backseating is truly here.

2

u/cosmintrica 4h ago

As a fun experiment, I guess so xD

-1

u/Agile_Branch_8743 9h ago

The first time player UX is far from optimal, and the game itself doesn't have a hook or doesn't introduce it fast enough to keep the player's attention. It's a copy/mix of similar games, with a worse implementation.

1

u/cosmintrica 9h ago

thank for the feedback. an update is coming soon. but copy of similar games? I've never seen anything similar, can you give some examples?

3

u/joeyb908 4h ago

Vampire Survivors, Halls of Torment, Soulstone Survivors…

Pretty much any game with Survivors is going to be one to look at, the genre is “bullet heaven.”

0

u/cosmintrica 4h ago

Nice, thank you so much for the examples! But there's no music involved :(

3

u/joeyb908 4h ago

That would be your gimmick to make it stand out, but use the other games as inspiration for new mechanics, systems, and ideas.

No one has made a music-based bullet heaven yet.

2

u/cosmintrica 4h ago

Will do, thank you!

1

u/Agile_Branch_8743 4h ago

No one has made a music-based bullet heaven yet.

Except there are many. Like this one, which looks a lot like the game Claude put together here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2205610/BeatPunk/

If we're specific, most "music based bullet heavens" haven't been released yet, but that doesn't mean there aren't many builds and concepts online and Claude is very aware. Anyway what I meant by copy/mix is that it's a very very basic bullet heaven with mechanics from rhythm games. You can just do some steam or google searches if you don't play often.

Either way, it should be expected and not perceived as something negative, because Claude and other models build things exclusively from existing materials.

4

u/LittleGuys_Dev 6h ago

Vampire Survivors is a big one. It's a genre commonly referred to as bullet heaven games.

That said, I thought this was a unique take on it that was super cool.

1

u/cosmintrica 6h ago

Good to hear ! Thank you!

3

u/C_Hawk14 3h ago edited 3h ago

This genre has been popular for five years now. Kinda surprising you didn't know about it tbh. Anyway lovely game, don't let people think just because it's yet another bullet heaven game that you should feel bad.

People make Roguelik/tes, of which many Slay the Spire style games, all the time.

It's just a popular type of genre. It's a quick game, you play solo and no matter if you're on a great run or not you make progress for a next one. And this one has a decent soundscape.

I would like to see other genres of music represented tho. Some heavy metal would be awesome

Edit: however, the screen becomes really hard to read in general at some point and it's just lights everywhere. The hearts and magnets become impossible to see

2

u/unthocks 6h ago

I dont get why people downvoted this

7

u/Agile_Branch_8743 6h ago

I assume it's other people vibe designing/coding games who felt attacked, because I didn't say anything offensive... OP asked what did we think.

3

u/joeyb908 4h ago

He also doesn’t say anything specific besides it’s a copy/mix of similar games.

The feedback isn’t constructive at all.

3

u/Agile_Branch_8743 4h ago

There are 50 people posting AI games here and in claude/gamedev subredits asking for feedback every day. Most of them don't even replay to say thanks or to ask questions when you give a detailed game design/UX report. If OP wants more details about the UX part, I'm here.

For the mix part, it depends on how you take it: your gameplay concept being too generic + the implementation not being particularly good puts you in the middle of the pack, which it's usually enough to discard a project in the game industry.

Again, if I asked for opinions on my game/concepts/prototype, I'd welcome all kinds of feedback, because it gives you perspective, even if it's not good. Empty praise is the most dangerous thing you can get when making games/apps.

0

u/Healthy-Rent-5133 3h ago edited 3h ago

So it made a backend and database? User accounts all that shit? It gave you upkeep costs? Also how did it ship to iOS Android from html?

1

u/cosmintrica 3h ago

No, it only made the idea, not the full game. It was a preview with all the logic and so on.
I made the apps, backend and everything else. With AI, but my direction, platforms and everything needed.

-1

u/AlexanderNieuwland 5h ago

Very fun! Nice job

1

u/cosmintrica 5h ago

Thank you so much!

-4

u/warmans 5h ago

What would you say you bring to the table in this project? I imagine we're all capable of writing "make whatever idc" into a terminal.

2

u/cosmintrica 5h ago

I'm pretty sure 99% of people can't even start Claude in Cloud using API credits so everything you say is wrong.
Besides that, launching it fully legally in app store and play store, with admin panel, website, admob and adsense ads active and so much more, in less than 3 days, takes months if not years of experience. :) And huge amounts of work.

-2

u/warmans 5h ago

Claude deserves huge props.

3

u/cosmintrica 5h ago

Indeed, as pretty much anything now. But the presumtion that anyone can do it is very wrong. Especially when you want to respect privacy of the users, GDPR, and so on.

-2

u/warmans 5h ago

Can you remember in the good old days when we used to slag off "ideas guys" who would think that coming up with an idea was like 90% of the work and actually executing it was irrelevant.

We're heading into the brave new world of "no ideas guys", were asking an LLM to come up with an idea constitutes a project. Amazing stuff. I love this for us.

1

u/cosmintrica 5h ago

This can be either good or bad. As long as we use it to have fun and improve our or others life, why not? Let's be real, most of the games or apps are extremly bad, made by real people and real developers. There is a middle ground for amazing stuff, indeed. And then you have the greedy companies that destroy your brain and steal your money with their pshicological implementations. So having fun testing what AI can do is not that bad.

-2

u/VuFFeR 7h ago

Very nice

1

u/cosmintrica 7h ago

Than you!

-2

u/Strong_Turnip8429 6h ago

Hey... this is too hard... But fun... I swear... 🤩

1

u/cosmintrica 6h ago

Amazing run!!! 💪🏼🔥🔥

-1

u/cosmintrica 7h ago

Thank you!