A game in progress · early playtest
Jumpgate
A game about a tiny probe, its drones and the factory that has to grow in empty space until it can build a gate for the humans who sent it. I'm designing it and playtesting every version; Claude, Anthropic's AI, writes the code. It changes every day.
Play the current buildRead the devlog
- Version 8.18
- Updated Oct 16, 2026
- Mac trackpad or mouse, and a keyboard
Version 8.18, the polished outlines
What it is
Build a gate in the dark
Humans sent tiny probes out across very long distances for a very long time. You are the AI of one of them, waking up damaged in the middle of nothing on a dying battery, with a crude laser and one drone. A pulse laser cracks rocks, the drone carries, builds and repairs, a smelter and a constructor make what you ask for from ore, and what you can't spare you burn for power.
Everything is almost never enough. Resources are few and far apart, compute is always short, travel is a slow flip and burn through debris, and the station is a layout you design from modules that pass items when they touch. The factory is the puzzle. The goal, a long way off, is the jump gate: an enormous, expensive wormhole to let the humans who sent you come through.
The look is geometric: Asteroids-style outlines on black, with colour only for cargo, resources and status. Jumpgate is a working title.
Where it stands
- Stage
- Early playtest, version 8.18
- Updated
- Oct 16, 2026, 8:47 am
- Playable now
- Chapters One to Ten, about four and a half to five hours for the test bot: wake on a dying battery and flip and burn to a copper field; salvage, assemble and overclock; scan for your own course; run on sunlight; arm an escort; cool a data center; train the AI for a second drone; reach the signal. Every chapter has a twist, a payoff and, from Three, a lasting choice, with optional derelicts to find on the way. Runs in the browser with a mouse and keyboard.
- Next
- Chapter Eleven, after the dead fleet.
- Kraig's notes from playing Chapters Two to Ten, Chapter Ten (Claude's draft) most of all.
- Later: the enemy, the planet and the long arc to the gate.
- Open question
- Whether the chapters feel right at this pace, and where the story goes after the dead fleet.
How it's being made
The full devlog- 43versions in the first 22 hours, from the first message at 10:39 am
- 6,362lines of code, every one written by Claude
- 62devlog entries, each with my words
I direct and playtest
I decide what the game is and how it should feel, play every version, and send notes as I go: what's confusing, what's too fast, what I want next.
Claude writes the code
Claude, Anthropic's AI, turns each note into a new version, tests it and publishes it, often within minutes. It also asks questions and suggests a default when a decision is open.
Every version is logged
The devlog keeps my notes in my own words, what changed and screenshots, so you can follow the whole thing from the first message.
Latest from the devlog
All 62 entries
Play the build
It runs in the browser on a computer, with a trackpad or mouse and a keyboard. It's an early build: it changes every day and saves can reset between versions. Tell me what felt good and what didn't.
Written with Claude, from the conversation where the game is being made.