How a 300k-line Claude Code game stayed shippable: 57% of 1,644 commits AI-co-authored
Tommyruin · reddit · 2026-11-13
A solo dev explains the guardrails behind Aita: The Dark Domain, a roguelite built with Claude Code (Dec 1 on Steam/mobile, $1.99, free demo). Stats: 1,644 commits since Jan 5, 943 (57%) with a Claude co-author line, 172k lines of game code plus 135k lines of tests.
Key rules he'd set up on day one:
- One rules engine: every card, Blessing and boss rule lives in a shared core used by solo, co-op, the game server and a headless AI test player; rules written elsewhere count as bugs, enforced by parity tests
- A .md file every session reads first: naming, architecture, definition of "done", plus handoff notes between sessions
- Gates before every push: lint, tests, build, docs check, and a translation check across 14 languages
- A headless AI player for iterating on balance and difficulty curves
Lessons: rules scattered across modes caused solo/co-op drift — consolidating into the shared core started in February but stray bits kept turning up until October; moving all game modes onto a single pixel canvas was a major visual milestone.
Related event: Indie Dev Builds 150K-Line Game Codebase with Claude Code Without Collapse(2 posts)→
More from coding & agent
- Anthropic's Lance Martin: 1,000 Claude Agents Proved Fermat's Last Theorem in 28.7 Hours — FinanceYF5 · 2026-11-13
- AI educator alfcnz: students lack coding-agent skills, so he'll teach a method — alfcnz · 2026-11-13
- Decision models for agent tool selection: 50 tools to 3, 47% fewer tokens, 22% faster — rajistics · 2026-11-13
- Anthropic engineer: Claude iterated meeting calendar designs live in one brainstorm — Flomerboy · 2026-11-13
- Code review is dead: nobody reads the 8,294-line diffs agents produce — prasenx · 2026-11-13
- Nuance Live preview: build real-time audio-video apps where an AI persona calls your tools — koltregaskes · 2026-11-13