Tower Defense Game
Free · play online in your browser, no download
A minimalist tower defense incremental game in the browser, with essence upgrades that carry over between runs. Its README says Claude Code built the entire game.
Official site claude-game-lilac.vercel.app, verified Nov 3, 2026. Linked as “Play the Game” from the README of the developer's own repository.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — official siteBrowserReleasedFree
Runs in a desktop or mobile browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
- View on GitHubGitHubReleased · Source code (MIT)Free
Source code repository, not a place to play.
Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Tower Defense Game
Tower Defense Game is a small, free tower defense incremental game for the browser, published as the open-source project claude-game. A single tower fires automatically at the nearest enemy while waves of enemies close in: basic enemies, fast swarms, slow tanks and splitters that break into swarms when killed. The early waves are hand-made and later ones are generated. Gold buys upgrades to damage, fire rate, range, health, regeneration and income, and the tower can learn multi-shot and bouncing shots; there is an active speed boost, bonuses for kill streaks and for waves without damage, and interest on saved gold. Essence earned in a run buys permanent upgrades for the next one. The developer, Martin Kess (GitHub mdkess), posted it on Reddit in June 2025 as an experiment in making a game “without writing a single line of code” using Claude Code with Opus 4; the README says “This entire game was created by Claude Code”. Claude also wrote a headless simulator that plays the game with different strategies to balance it. The developer calls the game “pretty derivative of some other games in the space”. Free in the browser; the source is under the MIT licence.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe README calls it “A modern tower defense game built entirely by Claude Code” and says “This entire game was created by Claude Code”. In the Reddit post (28 Jun 2025, UTC) titled “I built a silly game using only Claude Code and learned a ton doing it”, the developer writes of using a Max 20x plan “and only Opus 4”, and that “My goal was to make a game without writing a single line of code, and where the architecture was really clean.” The developer kept most instructions goal-oriented, but “had to cheat a few times with some layout related stuff”, at one point telling Claude exactly which CSS class to remove. Claude also wrote a headless simulator, which the developer says balanced the game by playing it. In a reply the developer adds that the first pass was sloppy, with game logic copied between the graphical and the simulated version, so the developer had to be strict and understand the code to guide Claude to clean abstractions.
- DeveloperREADME: “This entire game was created by Claude Code”; first commit message: “Tower Defense Game - Built entirely with Claude Code”. — GitHub (mdkess)
A Next.js and React app in TypeScript, with PixiJS v8 for rendering, per the README. The game logic sits in a core without graphics, and renderers draw it, which lets a headless simulator play thousands of runs with different strategies to test balance; the developer says this also forced Claude to keep graphics and gameplay apart. Per the developer, the first pass took about 2 hours (less than 3 hours of wall-clock time), followed by about an hour of fixes after feedback. The repository's 19 commits run from 26 Jun to 2 Jul 2025.
- Engine / framework
- PixiJS
- Languages
- TypeScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- About 2 hours for the first passDeveloper ReportedReddit (u/UncommonLanguage)
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“My goal was to make a game without writing a single line of code, and where the architecture was really clean.”- mdkess/claude-game (GitHub)
- I built a silly game using only Claude Code and learned a ton doing it (r/incremental_games)
Verification notes: AI use from the README of mdkess/claude-game and the developer's post on r/incremental_games by u/UncommonLanguage (28 Jun 2025, 14:21 UTC), which links the repository; the post and the developer's replies were read from the Arctic Shift Reddit archive on 7 Nov 2026. No AI code share is recorded: the README says “This entire game was created by Claude Code” and the post gives the goal of making the game “without writing a single line of code”, but neither states a share of the code; the developer also says some layout fixes were dictated precisely, without saying any code was typed by hand. The developer's name comes from the repository's licence (“Copyright 2025 Martin Kess”) and its commit author; the Reddit account is linked to it because the post presents the repository as the developer's own code. The README gives no title other than “Tower Defense Game”, which is also the page title; the repository is named claude-game. Features and the tech stack come from the README; commit dates from a clone of the repository on 7 Nov 2026 (19 commits, 26 Jun to 2 Jul 2025, the last one fixing bugs reported on Reddit). The live page loaded on 7 Nov 2026. A debug mode with cheat buttons exists for testing and is not described as a feature. The game was not played.
Development history
First commit to the repository: “Tower Defense Game - Built entirely with Claude Code”.
ObservedGitHub (mdkess)The developer presents the game and its source on r/incremental_games (14:21 UTC).
DeveloperReddit (u/UncommonLanguage)Last commit so far, fixing upgrade prices and debug buttons after player reports.
ObservedGitHub (mdkess)
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 purchases.
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: Concurrent players (site), Monthly revenue, Gross revenue.
GitHub
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: GitHub stars.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| claude-game README: Tower Defense Game GitHub (mdkess) | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| I built a silly game using only Claude Code and learned a ton doing it (r/incremental_games) Reddit (u/UncommonLanguage) | Social post | Jun 28, 2025 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Tower Defense Game Martin Kess | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) Martin Kess | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
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