Kinfolks
Free · play online in your browser, no download
An idle game about one Appalachian family across a hundred years and more: you play the clan, not a person, and mostly read what happened. The developer says Claude Code wrote all of the code.
Official site mdawg74.itch.io, verified Nov 3, 2026. The developer's own itch.io page (M Dawg, mdawg74), linked in the developer's Reddit post on r/ClaudeAI and from the game's Revival Jam 2026 and Super Free AI Game Jam #1 submission pages.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — itch.ioitch.ioReleasedFree
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Kinfolks
Kinfolks is an idle game about one Appalachian family from the mid-19th century onward. You do not play a person but the clan: you pick a founder, heads of the house grow old and die, and the place passes to whoever is left. Children are born, marry in, go to war, get turned out of the church and come back, and a register writes all of it down with real dates, from births and weddings to feuds, convictions and bad years; a long line can fill over a thousand entries. The creek, the forks and the church each keep a ledger on the family, so a short tithe, a running feud or a mortgage costs standing, and what the place makes, from the hogs and the still to the barn, goes to the store or into the farm. The page says the names, work, church, moonshine and feuds come from real Appalachian history and that odds such as infant mortality and land prices come from historical registers; fifteen public-domain recordings from 1906 to 1924 play now and then when someone in the house picks up an instrument. There is no ending: a line can die out, and a new one opens on the same creek. The game keeps running while you are away and is meant to be left open in a tab and read. The developer, M Dawg, says Claude Code wrote all of the code while the developer described what to build, played every build and hand-wrote the three hundred or so content tables the game runs on. Free in the browser on itch.io, on phone or desktop, with no account and an offline download; in English.
How it was built
Partially verifiedIn a post on r/ClaudeAI (5 Oct 2026, UTC) the developer writes: “Claude Code wrote the code. All of it. Five source files, a build script that rolls them into one html, saves, offline catch-up, the test rig. I don't write code, I describe what I want and read what comes back, and I play every build before it goes out.” The post gives examples: Claude Code built linked smokehouse, gun and workbench systems and ran a hundred simulated families unattended to report how they played out, and it reworked how births, deaths and weddings are dated, with a migration for old saves, checked against the old build on 500 families. What it could not do, per the developer, is the content: the game runs on three hundred and some hand-written tables (given names by decade, causes of death, what the preacher says), built from fifteen research documents, after an AI draft came out as “a fantasy village with the names changed”.
- DeveloperRevival Jam 2026 submission page: “I used Claude to write the code. The pictures come from FLUX.2 klein and I select each one after edits. The lines were written by AI and reviewed and edited by myself and game players. The game never calls an AI service or generates anything during the actual gameplay.” — itch.io (Revival Jam 2026, hosted by Society of Play)
Per the developer, Claude Code writes five source files that a build script rolls into one HTML file, including saves, offline catch-up and a test rig, and runs simulated families to check balance. The developer describes features, reads the results and plays every build; bugs reported by players were patched the same day, 17 patches in the first six days. The game's content tables are hand-written from the developer's research. The pictures come from the image model FLUX.2 klein, selected by the developer after edits, per the jam submission, and the music is fifteen public-domain recordings from 1906 to 1924, credited on the page.
- Engine / framework
- None (single HTML file, JavaScript)
- Languages
- Not disclosed
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- ~100% of shipped codeDeveloper ReportedReddit (u/MDawg74)
“Claude Code wrote the code. All of it.”Verification notes: AI use from the developer's post on r/ClaudeAI by u/MDawg74 (5 Oct 2026, 04:47 UTC), read from the Arctic Shift Reddit archive, and the AI answer on the game's Revival Jam 2026 submission page; game description, status (Released), languages (English), inputs, the offline download and the itch.io rating from the itch.io page (last updated 5 Nov 2026, 13:07 UTC); all re-read on 5 Nov 2026. Same developer as Pyrenees Chess and Tropes (itch.io account M Dawg, mdawg74; Reddit u/MDawg74). The itch.io page shows no publication date; the post of 5 Oct 2026 says the game had been up for six days, so the release date is not recorded. The post credits Claude Code with all of the code; the jam answer says Claude, which is consistent. Jam placements are taken from the official itch.io jam pages: Super Free AI Game Jam #1 (94 entries; ranked from 3 ratings) and Revival Jam 2026 (81 entries, 79 rated; ranked from 10 ratings). The developer's devlogs give 98 and 82 entries; the jam pages' counts are recorded. Kinfolks was released before Revival Jam 2026 opened (2 Oct 2026) or around that time, so it is not marked as a game-jam game. The developer's devlogs also report 1,000 views and 1,000 plays; these are not recorded as metrics. The jam answer says the game never calls an AI service during play, and a check of the shipped script on 5 Nov 2026 found no AI service calls. The page's Blog link (hammeranvilbrew.com) was not opened. Team size and location are not stated. itch.io rating 4.8 from 6 ratings on 5 Nov 2026; itch.io shows no download count. The game was not played.
Development history
The developer's post on r/ClaudeAI: six days up, 17 patches, all of the code written by Claude Code.
DeveloperReddit (u/MDawg74)Super Free AI Game Jam #1 results: 2nd in Creativity and 7th in Originality (37th overall) among 94 entries; the developer's devlog thanks the jam the same day.
Revival Jam 2026 voting closes (03:00 UTC): Kinfolks ranks 15th overall and 3rd in Mind among 81 entries.
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.
itch.io
Free in the browser (HTML5) with keyboard, mouse or touch and no account; an offline version (zip) is offered as a name-your-own-price download.
Not publicly available: Gross revenue.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kinfolks by M Dawg itch.io | Store page | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| I made an idle game where you watch an Appalachian family for a hundred years and mostly can't help them. Six days up, 17 patches, Claude Code built all of it. (r/ClaudeAI) Reddit (u/MDawg74) | Social post | Oct 5, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Rate Kinfolks for Revival Jam 2026 itch.io (Revival Jam 2026, hosted by Society of Play) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Revival Jam 2026: results itch.io (Society of Play) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Rate Kinfolks for Super Free AI Game Jam #1 itch.io (Super Free AI Game Jam #1, hosted by Morei309) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| 2nd Place in “Creativity!” - Thank You! itch.io (M Dawg devlog) | Devlog | Oct 13, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
- Who wrote the text
- The developer's Reddit post (5 Oct 2026) says the game's content runs on three hundred and some hand-written tables and that an AI draft of that content was rejected. The Revival Jam 2026 submission says “The lines were written by AI and reviewed and edited by myself and game players.” Neither source says which text is which. (Reddit (u/MDawg74), itch.io (Revival Jam 2026, hosted by Society of Play))
