Reptile Catcher
A free browser demo of a pixel-art lizard ranch: stun and bag wild lizards on short runs, then sell them or breed them for rare inherited patterns. The developer says Claude Code wrote the code, with the demo built in one day.
Links go to the official store or developer page. Last verified Nov 4, 2026.
Where to play
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- View demo on itch.ioitch.ioDemo · Free browser demo covering the first chapter; itch.io lists the game as in developmentFree
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Reptile Catcher
Reptile Catcher is a lizard-catching and breeding game; a free browser demo is on itch.io. You head out on short catching runs, moving your character yourself, stun wild lizards and bag them. Back at the ranch you sell them for coins or pair them in a terrarium to breed for rare patterns: every lizard has its own genes, patterns are inherited, and there are five rarity tiers (Normal, Pattern, High Pattern, Albino and Mutant). Border collies herd lizards toward you and bait traps hold them in place. Coins go into an upgrade tree that branches like a mind map, and delivery contracts open the next area; there is also a collection and a gallery. There is no idle progress and no prestige: the developer designed it as one straight run with no failing, and the full game is meant to last 4 to 6 hours. The demo covers the first chapter, up to the crocodile; the full game is planned with four regions and more species, rarity tiers and run gimmicks. The game supports gamepads, keeps saves in the browser and can be played in English or Korean. The developer, krenin, says Claude Code wrote the code, built the demo in one day in 86 commits, and spent about another week polishing and shipping it.
How it was built
Partially verifiedIn a dev.to post the developer says the game runs on Godot and that Claude Code wrote the code, while the developer's part was setting the direction, playtesting and picking the assets. Starting from a game template on a Sunday afternoon, the catch-sell-breed loop was running five minutes later, and the next commit was a balance simulator in which a bot plays the game; Claude reran it after every number change, and the bot was later split into five play styles. Pixel sprites came from PixelLab connected to Claude through MCP: Claude generated candidates, the developer picked one with notes, and Claude recorded each chosen sprite's seed. The developer removed features Claude had built (auto-catching, auto-selling, offline progress, prestige and a fame tree) to keep the design to one straight run. In the week before release, Claude added four bosses, drew the area backgrounds, fixed demo lock bugs and prepared the screenshots, cover and web build. No model is named.
- Developeritch.io AI disclosure: AI Assisted, Graphics (Code is not ticked). — itch.io
Built with Claude Code from a Godot game template, per the developer: 86 commits from 1:46 PM to 3 AM, ending with a commit labelled “trial (demo)”. At 2:20 PM the developer switched from a screen of tabs and buttons to pixel art, catching runs and a mind-map upgrade tree. A bot-driven balance simulator, built right after the core loop, measured how long the game takes (for example “4h 19m to the ending (bot)”) and exposed scattered demo-lock rules. Instead of regenerating sprites, species were swapped to suit what the sprite tool draws well at 32 pixels (a skink for the house gecko, a frilled lizard for the flying lizard, a horned lizard for the bearded dragon). Polishing and shipping took about another week.
- Engine / framework
- Godot
- Languages
- Not disclosed
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- One day (86 commits) for the demo build, then about a week to polish and shipDeveloper Reporteddev.to (Krenin)
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“It runs on Godot, and Claude Code wrote the code. My part was setting the direction, playtesting, and picking the assets.”Verification notes: AI use and the build story from the developer's dev.to post (11 Oct 2026), which links the itch.io page. Publication of the demo (11 Oct 2026, 11:50 UTC) and its devlog (12:24 UTC) from the itch.io page, which lists the game as in development. The itch.io AI disclosure ticks only Graphics, not Code (see conflicts). Gameplay, rarity tiers, the demo's scope and the languages (English / 한국어) come from the itch.io page. The post's day of the one-day build is given only as a Sunday afternoon. The sprites come from PixelLab during development; nothing in the sources describes AI used during play. Team size and location are not stated. The game was not played.
Development history
The demo is published on itch.io (11:50 UTC) with a devlog, and the developer posts on dev.to about building it with Claude Code.
Game performance
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itch.io
The demo is free in the browser (HTML5); saves stay in that browser. No price or platform has been announced for the full game.
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Not publicly available: itch.io rating, Gross revenue.
Sales & revenue (all platforms)
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Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Building a game demo with Claude Code in one day dev.to (Krenin) | Devlog | Oct 11, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Reptile Catcher (Demo) by krenin itch.io | Store page | Oct 11, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
- AI disclosure
- The itch.io AI disclosure ticks only Graphics, while the developer's dev.to post says Claude Code wrote the code. (itch.io, dev.to (Krenin))
