Kingdoms of Sand
A free castle-building real-time strategy game in 3D in the browser for up to eight players, in closed beta; its developers say Claude Code did most of the programming.
Teaser onlyNot playable yet · Watch the developer's video ↓
Where to play
The developer has shown this game in a public video, but there is no public build yet. We update this page when there is news.
Watch the developer's video (DEV Community (Alexander Schikowsky)) ↗
About Kingdoms of Sand
Kingdoms of Sand is a real-time castle-building strategy game in 3D that runs in the browser, on computers and phones, set in a medieval desert with oases, swamps, rock ridges and dragons hatched from eggs. Players run an economy of 62 buildings and 23 goods, keep their people fed, taxed and supplied with ale and religion, draw walls, palisades, moats and pitch ditches, and attack or defend with rams, catapults, trebuchets, siege towers, ladders and sappers. Matches take 1 to 8 players, online with ranked modes, clans and tournaments, or offline against up to seven computer opponents. The developers say they played Stronghold as kids and that the game is inspired by it, but that its graphics, numbers and rules are their own. Alexander Schikowsky of Coding 9 GmbH, a small German software company, writes that Claude Code did most of the programming while the team played every build and made the design calls. The first changelog entry, v0.1.0, is dated 19 October 2026; nine days later the game was at v0.81.3, after 145 releases and about 250 pull requests. The game is free and in closed beta, with invite codes sent in waves from a waitlist on the official site.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe developers write that Claude Code did most of the programming. Each task ran in its own thread on its own branch and opened its own pull request, guided by concept documents and shared rules in CLAUDE.md; every change comes with a test, and Claude attaches Playwright before/after screenshots to each visual change. Claude also wrote the Blender Python script that cleans up the AI-generated character models. The team played every build and made the design calls.
- Developer“Last week we finally started, with Claude Code doing most of the programming.” — DEV Community (Alexander Schikowsky)
- Developer“Claude wrote most of the code. We played every build and decided what to change.” — DEV Community (Alexander Schikowsky)
TypeScript monorepo of about 80,000 lines: a deterministic game simulation, a server-authoritative Node and WebSocket server with PostgreSQL, and a React HUD with a three.js renderer. Buildings, walls, terrain, water and fire are generated in code; the characters started as AI-generated rigged models processed by a Blender script that Claude wrote.
- Engine / framework
- Three.js
- Languages
- TypeScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- Nine days from v0.1.0 (19 Oct 2026) to v0.81.3 (27 Oct 2026): 145 releases and about 250 pull requestsDeveloper ReportedDEV Community (Alexander Schikowsky)
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“Claude wrote most of the code. We played every build and decided what to change.”Verification notes: AI use, development time and features come from Alexander Schikowsky's DEV Community post of 27 Oct 2026, which shows screenshots and a short clip but links no video; the post speaks for a team (“we”) whose other members are not named. The developer is identified through the site's imprint (Coding 9 GmbH, represented by Alexander Schikowsky). When checked on 7 Nov 2026 the official site still offered only a waitlist for the closed beta, so no public build exists. The computer opponents are described as four strategies balanced with a headless benchmark; no source mentions a language model at play time. Stronghold is named by the developers as inspiration only; they state the graphics, numbers and rules are their own. Team size is not stated.
Development history
Development starts: first changelog entry, v0.1.0 “The first walls”.
DeveloperDEV Community (Alexander Schikowsky)Development post with screenshots published at v0.81.3; closed beta with a waitlist on the official site.
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.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| We built the castle game from our childhood with Claude, in 9 days, in the browser DEV Community (Alexander Schikowsky) · English | Devlog | Oct 27, 2026 | Nov 7, 2026 |
| Kingdoms of Sand – Medieval RTS & Castle Building Game Kingdoms of Sand · English | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 7, 2026 |
| Impressum – Kingdoms of Sand Kingdoms of Sand · de | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 7, 2026 |
