DeepHold
A hardcore 2.5D pixel dungeon game for PC: go down with one lantern, build your own dungeon from the loot and dare friends to clear it; the solo developer says Claude made all of the code.
Links go to the official store or developer page. Last verified Nov 3, 2026.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- View demo on GitHubGitHubDemo · In development; friends test buildFree
Download from the GitHub releases page.
Desktop · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About DeepHold
A free 2.5D pixel-art action game for Windows and macOS, still in development and shared as a friends test build. It mixes top-down real-time action with roguelite looting and dungeon building. You go down into a dungeon with nothing but a lantern, and every floor rolls a new map, a new set of monsters and a floor type such as traps, hunters or a treasure vault. Loot only reaches your storehouse if you get out through the escape portals on floors 3, 6 and 9; die and you lose what you carry. Nothing about your character ever gets stronger: there is no gear, no stats and no levels, three hits end a run, and the only healing is a rare potion. Five biomes each end with a boss (the fifth goes on without end from floor 13), and the developer counts 50 monsters. Back in the village you smelt ore, summon monsters and build a dungeon of your own with traps for friends to try; the village square, friends' dungeons and rankings need an internet connection. The developer, who runs the one-person studio qminlab, says Claude made all of the code, pixel art, sound and music, and that they wrote no code by hand.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe developer's case file says all of DeepHold's code, art, sound and music was made by Claude, and that the developer decided what to build, played it, said what felt wrong and pressed the release button without writing a line of code. Its tools table lists “Claude (app chats · Opus / Sonnet)” for design, code, pixel art, sound, music, verification and patch notes. The work is split across six chats by role (design, a central chat, three development chats and assets); the central chat writes each task as a markdown file and each development chat works in its own git worktree. The pixel art comes from Python drawing scripts Claude wrote, and about 640 sound effects and 31 music tracks were synthesised in code.
The developer's GPTers post about the game is titled “Claude Code로 혼자 PC 게임 만들기” (making a PC game alone with Claude Code) and is tagged ClaudeCode, but its text only speaks of Claude and of Claude chats (대화방). It does not say which part of the work, if any, was done in Claude Code rather than in the Claude app.
One person directing several Claude chats, each with its own role: a design chat wrote the design document, a central chat decides versions, writes task files for the other chats, re-runs the type check and the roughly 2,400 unit tests and writes the patch notes, three development chats split the party/server, UI and dungeon/monster code, and an asset chat makes the pixel art, animation, sound and music. The developer plays every build and pushes a tag; GitHub Actions then builds the Windows and macOS files, and installed copies update themselves. Pixel art is drawn by Python scripts that Claude wrote, village buildings start as simple 3D models rasterised to pixels, and sound effects and music are synthesised in code with no outside audio. Game rules are deterministic, so the server replays a run's inputs to verify a record. The case file says the developer rewrites a request rather than fixing a result by hand.
- Engine / framework
- Phaser 3 (with Electron for the desktop builds)
- Languages
- TypeScript
- Team size
- 1 (solo)Developer Reportedqminlab
- Initial build time
- About two days (design document 15 Oct 2026, first build 17 Oct 2026)Developer Reportedqminlab
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- ~100% of shipped codeDeveloper Reportedqminlab
“All of DeepHold’s code, art, sound and music was made by Claude. I decided what to build, played it, said what felt wrong and pressed the release button. I didn’t write a single line of code myself.”Verification notes: AI use comes from the developer's own case file (qminlab.com, English and Korean versions) and the developer's GPTers post of 23 Oct 2026; both say the code, art, sound and music were made by Claude and that no code was written by hand (case file stat: “0 lines written by hand”). The tool is recorded as Claude because the case file's tools table names “Claude (app chats · Opus / Sonnet)”; the GPTers post's title and tag name Claude Code (see conflicts). The game was not run. The public repository qminlab/deephold-releases holds the README, patch notes and builds; the source code itself is in a private repository, per the case file. On 4 Nov 2026 the repository had 25 version tags, and its version.json named v0.6.4 as the latest, released 24 Oct 2026 at 18:17 UTC (the patch-note index dates it 25 Oct, Korean time); the download links for v0.6.4 resolved. The case file's header still reads “In development · v0.6.0 · friend test”, so the listing is recorded as a demo. Numbers such as 50 monsters, 5 bosses, about 640 sound effects, 31 music tracks, 2,400+ automated tests and 25 releases in 5 days are the developer's. The case file estimates a first-month cost of about $210–$310 from public prices, most of it the Claude Max plan, which it says is shared with other projects, so no development cost is recorded. The design document's odds and numbers were, per the developer, sampled from well-known hardcore games; no third-party assets are named. Planned next steps on the case file: Korean rating-board test certification, a Steam playtest and translations. A crowdfunding campaign is being prepared. LICENSE: all rights reserved; gameplay videos and screenshots allowed.
Development history
Design document written: core rules, 50 monsters, 5 bosses, the economy and the dungeon-building rules.
DeveloperqminlabFirst build uploaded (v0.2–v0.3), with automated builds and the game server; boss floors and parties added the same day.
Version 0.4: emblems, titles, secret rooms and an easy mode; the developer counts ten releases that day.
Version 0.6.0: hit detection follows the sprites' pixels, and the village gets proper draw order and building collision.
The developer describes the six-chat workflow in a post on GPTers.
DeveloperGPTers (김규민)Version 0.6.4 published on the public GitHub releases page (18:17 UTC; 25 Oct in Korea), reworking the furnace boss.
ObservedGitHub
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.
GitHub
Free download from the public GitHub releases page: a Windows installer and a portable .exe (unsigned, so Windows shows a warning) and macOS .dmg files for Apple silicon and Intel (v0.6.4, observed 4 Nov 2026). Windows 10/11 64-bit. The village square, friends' dungeons and rankings need an internet connection.
Not publicly available: GitHub stars.
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Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeepHold — Case file QL-004 qminlab | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Claude Code로 혼자 PC 게임 만들기: 대화방 6개로 역할을 나눠 5일 동안 25번 출시한 방법 GPTers (김규민) · Korean | Devlog | Oct 23, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| qminlab/deephold-releases (README, patch notes and builds) GitHub · Korean | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) qminlab | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
- Release status
- The case file's header reads “In development · v0.6.0 · friend test” and calls the build a friends test build, while the public GitHub releases page offers builds up to v0.6.4 that anyone can download, and the GPTers post counts 25 releases (출시) in five days. (qminlab, GitHub, GPTers (김규민))
- AI tool
- The GPTers post's title (“Claude Code로 혼자 PC 게임 만들기”) and its tag name Claude Code; the post's text speaks only of Claude and Claude chats, and the case file's tools table lists “Claude (app chats · Opus / Sonnet)”. (GPTers (김규민), qminlab)
