Carnegie
Free · play online in your browser, no download
Lay track, run trains and haul freight across the 1800s, and watch the towns you connect grow into cities. A free browser railroad tycoon whose code Claude wrote.
Official site carnegiegame.com, verified Nov 3, 2026. Linked as the place to play from the developer's own Reddit posts on r/WebGames and r/ClaudeGameDev.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — official siteBrowserReleased · In public playtestingFree
Runs in a desktop browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Carnegie
Carnegie is a free isometric railway and city-growth game for the browser. You lay track, build stations, set train timetables and haul freight so that the towns you connect grow from a few houses into cities. It runs on real history: you pick a start year (1835 to 1890 in the developer's description), buy the locomotives of the day as they appear, such as the 4-4-0 American, the 2-6-0 Mogul and the 2-8-0 Consolidation, and pay that year's price for rail. Iron rails wear out until steel arrives in 1867; feeding coal and iron ore to a steel works lets steel build skyscrapers from 1885. There is a campaign that starts with three towns in 1850 and a daily run, and the game saves in the browser with no sign-up or download, working with a mouse or on an iPad. The solo developer, avdrav7 on Reddit, says it was made in the spirit of A-Train, an old Japanese game, and that the code, about 25,000 lines, was written by Claude under the developer's direction: Claude (Opus) runs in a terminal coding agent with access to the repository, a shell and a browser, while the developer describes what is wanted, makes the design calls and plays each build. All graphics are drawn in code, with no image or audio generation. Historical prices come from cited sources such as the Warren-Pearson wholesale price index and Historical Statistics of the United States.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe developer's post on r/ClaudeGameDev (27 Oct 2026, UTC) is titled “Carnegie: a free browser railroad tycoon where Claude wrote every line of code (about 25,000)”. It says: “Claude (Opus) runs in a terminal coding agent with access to my repo, a shell and a browser. I don't write the code: I describe what I want, make the design calls, play each build and say when it ships.” For each feature it reads the code, makes the change, adds tests (379 in Vitest at the time), runs the typecheck and tests and opens the game in headless Chromium to screenshot the change; a notes file tells it how to branch, write release notes, merge, deploy and check the live site. It also researched the historical steel economy and put every number in one file with its sources, built the playtest tooling, and made the trailer by driving the real game in headless Chromium frame by frame and cutting it to the developer's music with ffmpeg. The coding agent is not named, so no Claude Code entry is recorded.
- DeveloperPost on r/WebGames (26 Oct 2026): “To be upfront: the code was written by Claude, an AI, under my direction. The graphics are drawn by the game's code, with no image generators.” — Reddit (u/avdrav7)
TypeScript with PixiJS, built with Vite and validated with Zod, tested with Vitest and Playwright, and hosted on Cloudflare Pages with D1 and GitHub Actions. Claude writes the code, tests and release notes in a terminal coding agent and deploys when the developer says “ship it”. All graphics are drawn in code, with no image or audio generation; the music is credited in the game to avdrav. Locomotives, technologies and prices are tied to historical dates from sources the developer names (the Warren-Pearson wholesale price index, Historical Statistics of the United States and NBER series on FRED). Playtest links tag a browser's anonymous play stats, and a Report a problem button sends a note with the save file.
- Engine / framework
- PixiJS (TypeScript)
- Languages
- TypeScript
- Team size
- 1 (solo)Developer ReportedReddit (u/avdrav7)
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- ~100% of shipped codeDeveloper ReportedReddit (u/avdrav7)
“I don't write the code: I describe what I want, make the design calls, play each build and say when it ships.”- Carnegie: a free browser railroad tycoon where Claude wrote every line of code (r/ClaudeGameDev)
- Carnegie: build a railroad across the 1800s (r/WebGames)
- Carnegie trailer (YouTube)
Verification notes: AI use and workflow from two posts by u/avdrav7, on r/WebGames (26 Oct 2026, 12:14 UTC) and r/ClaudeGameDev (27 Oct 2026, 11:47 UTC), read from the Arctic Shift Reddit archive on 8 Nov 2026; both link carnegiegame.com, and the r/WebGames post links the trailer. The trailer is on the YouTube channel “Carengie: Railroads · Towns · Steel” (@carnegiegame), checked through YouTube's oEmbed data. The site's title screen and description were read on 8 Nov 2026; the title screen shows “1830 – 1910” while the developer's post gives start years from 1835 to 1890, so the developer's wording is used. The terminal coding agent is not named; only Claude (Opus) is, so the tool is recorded as Claude. “Every line of code (about 25,000)” is from the post title and is recorded as 100%. The development start (30 Sep 2026, 112 commits by 27 Oct) is from the post; no first public release date is stated, so none is recorded. The A-Train comparison is the developer's; no names or assets from it are used, and the name Carnegie refers to steel history, not a game. The developer is known only by the Reddit handle; the game's music credit reads “avdrav”, and the developer says the trailer is cut to “a track of mine”. The game's main script was searched and contains no AI service addresses; it sends anonymous play stats to the developer's own backend. English interface. The game was not played.
Development history
Development starts, per the developer.
DeveloperReddit (u/avdrav7)The developer shares the game on r/WebGames with a five-minute trailer, saying the code was written by Claude.
A post on r/ClaudeGameDev describes the workflow: Claude wrote every line of the roughly 25,000 lines, with 379 tests.
DeveloperReddit (u/avdrav7)
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
Browser (official site)
Free in the browser with no sign-up or download; saves in the browser. Works with a mouse or on an iPad, per the developer. The game sends anonymous play stats, which can be switched off in Game > Settings.
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: Concurrent players (site), Monthly revenue, Gross revenue.
Sales & revenue (all platforms)
Browser game — there are no downloads to count.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carnegie: a free browser railroad tycoon where Claude wrote every line of code (about 25,000). Here's how I worked with it (r/ClaudeGameDev) Reddit (u/avdrav7) | Social post | Oct 27, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Carnegie - build a railroad across the 1800s and watch the towns you connect grow into cities (r/WebGames) Reddit (u/avdrav7) | Social post | Oct 26, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Carnegie: a railroad tycoon game in your browser carnegiegame.com | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Carnegie Trailer YouTube (@carnegiegame) | Social post | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) avdrav7 | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
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