Skip and Play: Naval Warfare, a ship fighting game inspired by Pirates!
When Claude Code released Fable 5 (and before it was shut down), I used it to vibe code a game. Overall, I was impressed, but I also definitely noticed more token usage. The game idea was based on a game I enjoyed playing in the early 90s, Sid Meier's Pirates! I spent a fair amount of time in plan mode discussing the concept, game dynamics, etc. I asked the model to ask me any questions before moving to development, which always uncovers a few important details to decide on before building.
Game Features
The game idea was to create ship warfare inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates! from the 90s (technically, the original game came out in 1987, but I only played the Gold version released in 1994). The game dynamics are simple: you control a ship that sails on the screen, and you can only turn left, turn right, or fire cannons with the spacebar. The computer has the other ship, and the goal is to sink the computer ship before it tries to sink your ship.
Prompting with Claude Code AI
One thing I wonder about is how much to dictate to the model versus how much to let it decide on its own (or ask me questions but let it present the choices). There is likely a fine balance here that depends on your skill set, how well you can describe what you want, and how much you care about specific things. Coming from a technical background with a pretty good idea of what I wanted, I used prompts like this with Fable 5:
In retrospect, it would have probably been better to rework the prompt to focus more on my goals and outcomes and let Claude Code present me with different options and choices. Something to consider for the next games.
User Reception
I posted the game on Hacker News and was surprised by the quick and positive reception. I landed on the first page of HN and received a large spike in traffic, lots of people playing the game, and a lot of valuable feedback.
Game Improvements
A few days later, I decided to add some enhancements mentioned by people on Hacker News:
- Wind dynamics
- Opponent selection or random
- Support for mobile and touch devices
- Difficulty level selection
- Sounds for firing cannon and the ship getting hit
- Survival mode for seeing how many ships you can sink with increasing difficulty
At some point, I might add multiplayer, but enough writing. Go check out the game or take a look at the source code on GitHub.