NOVA LANCER
A 3D rail shooter over sea, canyon and a neon fortress city, ending against a mechanical sea dragon. The developer says Claude Code made it from a one-sentence request in about 1 hour 40 minutes.
Official site tanuu5.github.io, verified Nov 3, 2026. Linked as the play address (“ブラウザで遊ぶ”) from the developer's own GitHub repository README (tanuu5/nova-lancer); hosted on the developer's GitHub Pages.
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 browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About NOVA LANCER
NOVA LANCER is a free 3D rail shooter for the browser. Its one mission, AZURE COAST (about three minutes plus a boss fight), flies over a sunset sea, through a red-rock canyon with falling stone pillars and over a neon fortress city at night, and ends against Mizuchi, a mechanical sea dragon that rises from the water: destroy the turrets on its back and the core in its mouth opens up as a weak point. You lock on with a charged shot and release homing shots, use smart bombs, roll to deflect enemy fire, boost and brake, and collect rings for shields, upgrades and extra lives, while three wingmen and headquarters talk to you over the radio with animated faces. There are three difficulty levels, a results screen with ranks and medals, and keyboard, mouse, gamepad and touch controls. The README describes it as an original Star Fox-style 3D rail shooter made from scratch for the browser, unrelated to Nintendo's Star Fox series and using none of its names, characters, music or assets. The developer, たぬ (tanuu5), credits planning and direction to たぬ and development to Claude Code (Claude Opus 5.5, reasoning level MAX), which built it from one request in about 1 hour 40 minutes. Terrain, sea, sky, ships, the boss, the music, sound effects and radio voices are all generated in code; the game uses no image or audio files. In Japanese, free on the developer's GitHub Pages site; the code is MIT-licensed.
How it was built
VerifiedThe README credits planning and direction to たぬ and development to Claude Code (Claude Opus 5.5, reasoning level MAX). It says the first request was a single sentence, and that Claude carried the design, code, staging and testing as one continuous piece of work, about 1 hour 40 minutes for that one request. Two sub-agents worked in parallel on the music and sound effects and on the radio-window face graphics while the main session built the 3D parts. To check the game without a display, Claude added frame-by-frame stepping and an auto-pilot test ship that chases and shoots enemies, and used them to play the mission from start to finish.
- DeveloperDeveloper's note post of 27 Sep 2026: NOVA LANCER is one of the browser works that Opus 5.5 made, one a day, from 23 to 26 Sep 2026; all four were made with code only, without image or audio files. — note (たぬ / tank_ai)
Directed by one developer, with Claude Code (Claude Opus 5.5, MAX) doing design, code and testing from one request, and two sub-agents making the music and sound effects and the radio portraits (SVG). The README's usage table for that request lists about 1 hour 40 minutes, 312 API calls (219 main, 51 music and sound, 42 portraits), about 1.2 million output tokens (about 780,000 of them thinking) and about 9,600 lines of source code (16 JavaScript files plus HTML/CSS); publishing to GitHub is not included. The game is rendered with three.js, with terrain, sea, sky, ships and the boss generated in code and all audio synthesised with Web Audio. A build step bundles everything, three.js included, into one index.html; only the fonts load from Google Fonts.
- Engine / framework
- Three.js
- Languages
- JavaScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- About 1 hour 40 minutes, from one requestDeveloper ReportedGitHub
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“Three.js等を使って、それでなくても良いですけど、スターフォックスみたいなゲーム作れます？可能な限りリッチな品質でお願いしたく。”Verification notes: AI use, the request, the token table, features, licence (MIT) and release date (2026-09-24, from the README's update history) come from the developer's repository README, read through raw.githubusercontent.com on 4 Nov 2026; the README also links the play address, which loaded that day. The creator statement is the first request as quoted in the README. The README calls the game Star Fox-style but states that it is an original work unrelated to Nintendo's Star Fox series and uses none of its names, characters, music or assets. The page's script calls no AI services. Not the same game as Nova Lancer by hiyaman, which has its own profile. The repository's stars and commit history were not checked (github.com was not reachable from our checker). Team size is not stated; location is not stated.
Development history
Published in the browser, per the README's update history.
DeveloperGitHubFix: normal shots, enemy lasers and the boss's sweeping beam had not been drawn on screen; normal shots made slower, longer and thicker.
DeveloperGitHubUpdate: after the opening, the wingmen fly behind the player's ship and give covering fire, coming forward one at a time; a copyright line was added to the title screen.
DeveloperGitHub
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)
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| tanuu5/nova-lancer (README) GitHub · Japanese | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 に動画を3本作ってもらった：自己紹介・系譜・作品集PV note (たぬ / tank_ai) · Japanese | Devlog | Sep 27, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) たぬ (tanuu5) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
