I'm someone who makes indie games solo as a hobby. I've been steadily running claude MAX as my main partner for a couple of months now.
The game I'm making is called "Mujang-jeon" — it's a pixel art tactical auto-battler set in a fantasy world based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Simply put, it's a build-combination roguelite.
But I'm the type who likes to prepare thoroughly before doing anything.. So I made up my mind to stay true to the design phase first, and before building anything, I borrowed some game design theory books from the library and went through them.
I then compiled a separate "borrowed concepts" document where I reworked the concepts I pulled from those books (MDA framework, systems thinking, difficulty curves, balance scaling, etc.) into the language of my own project, and used that as a baseline to proceed with the design.
After leisurely grinding through text work for a couple of months, what I have so far is roughly..
[Combat structure, synergy design, content scope (182 generals with tags and combinations), worldbuilding]
The worldbuilding wasn't just thrown together either — I first built the world using Professor Kim Jeong-tae's SODA model (Space, Object, Dwellers, Actions) from a lecture series, then layered the storytelling on top with the WINC model, designing everything so that every piece connects to a single axis: "completing a military doctrine." The idea is that even weak generals gathered under the same doctrine can form a legendary combination, and when a ruler who carries the Mandate of Heaven joins, the tier rises — this one-line rule is shared across the systems, narrative, and presentation alike.
The battle screen in this post "https://damoang.net/free/6522593" was actually a result that came out of this design framework. (claude can't draw, so I had to rely on GPT just for the images lol) Right now I'm using that image as the official UI reference and continuing with the screen layout design.
Of course, whether this is the right direction is something I'll only really feel after I've built the whole thing.
This is my first post on the AI board, and I think it turned out way too long — I'm sure it was quite a tedious read.
It ended up getting longer than intended as I was writing it as an introduction. I personally prefer short posts too, so I'll keep things brief going forward ^^
It's nice to meet everyone, and if there's anyone out there using AI for game development, I'd greatly appreciate any guidance and advice.
Thank you.
