Scrim
A top-down tactical shooter in which every light casts a shadow and you see only what your soldier sees, on an engine of its own. The developer says the code was written with Claude Code agents.
Links go to the official store or developer page. Last verified Nov 4, 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 itch.ioitch.ioDemo · Free pre-alpha demo, offline against botsFree
Download from itch.io.
Desktop · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Scrim
Scrim is a top-down tactical shooter in which every light casts a shadow: flashlights sweep wet streets, muzzle flashes light up corridors, and you see only what your soldier sees. Footsteps are heard rather than drawn, and every wall has a height that bullets, sight, blasts and light all respect, so crouching behind a low wall hides you while standing lets you fire over it. A builder's kit puts up sandbag lines, blast walls, barbed wire, watchtowers, floodlights, teleporters, a med tent and upgradeable sentry turrets; you can drive a pickup, a Humvee with a mounted M2 or a quad, fly a camera drone that drops grenades, and fight by day or night in rain, thunderstorms, snow and mist. The free pre-alpha demo plays offline against bots and has seven modes: a tutorial, a sandbox with every weapon and vehicle, team deathmatch, Strike (five against five in rounds, first to 13), Heist (rob a guarded depot at night), Deadwatch (endless waves of the infected) and Wildcard (a new kit and arena every round). Online multiplayer and server-side custom games are announced for the full game, not the demo. The developer says the game uses no engine: it is written in TypeScript on Bun with its own WebGL2 renderer and WebAudio code, packaged with Electron, and the code was written with Claude Code agents while the developer planned and reviewed the work; the announcer voices, many sound effects and the trailer music were made with ElevenLabs. Free on itch.io for Windows and Linux.
How it was built
Partially verifiedIn a post on r/aigamedev (25 Oct 2026, UTC) the developer writes: “Code: written with Claude Code agents. I plan the work and review it; agents each work on their own branch, and a merge gate only lands a branch when the type check and the test suite pass.” The post puts the project at about 470,000 lines of TypeScript with around 900 test files. To keep the AI-written code in check, the simulation is deterministic and runs server-side even in single player, with a golden-master replay test, so a change that breaks gameplay shows up in the tests. The announcer voices, many sound effects and the trailer's music were made with ElevenLabs. No model is named, and no code share is given.
- Developeritch.io AI disclosure: AI Assisted, Graphics, Sounds (Code is not ticked; see conflicts). — itch.io
Per the developer's post, no game engine: TypeScript running on Bun, a WebGL2 renderer and WebAudio written by hand, and an Electron desktop app. Claude Code agents wrote the code, each on its own branch, and a merge gate only lands a branch when the type check and the test suite pass; the developer plans and reviews the work. The simulation is deterministic and runs on a server even in single player, checked by a golden-master replay test. Voices, many sound effects and the trailer music were made with ElevenLabs.
- Engine / framework
- Custom engine (TypeScript on Bun, WebGL2, Electron)
- Languages
- TypeScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- About two months to the first public demoDeveloper ReportedReddit (u/catinrage)
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“Code: written with Claude Code agents. I plan the work and review it; agents each work on their own branch, and a merge gate only lands a branch when the type check and the test suite pass.”Verification notes: The Claude Code claim comes from the developer's post on r/aigamedev by u/catinrage (25 Oct 2026, 09:30 UTC), read from the Arctic Shift Reddit archive; the post has the same name as the itch.io account and links this itch.io page. The two-month development time, the line and test-file counts and the ElevenLabs credit are from the post. Modes, features, controls, system requirements and downloads come from the itch.io page (published 25 Oct 2026, 09:02 UTC; status In development; checked 4 Nov 2026). The post calls Strike a bomb-defusal mode; the itch.io page describes it as five against five in rounds. The page says multiplayer and custom games written in TypeScript are in the full game, not in this demo, so the game is not tagged multiplayer. The post describes a WebGL2 renderer in an Electron app, while the itch.io requirements say the game runs on Vulkan with a DirectX 11 fallback on Windows; both can be true of a Chromium-based app, but we did not check. Under the heading “No engine” the post says the WebGL2 renderer and WebAudio were “written by hand”, while also saying the code was written with Claude Code agents; we read this as built for the game rather than taken from an engine, which the post does not spell out. The itch.io page lists no languages and shows no rating. Team size and location are not stated. Nothing in the sources describes AI used during play (the bots are game logic). The game was not played.
Development history
A free pre-alpha demo for Windows and Linux is published on itch.io and announced on r/aigamedev.
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 download for 64-bit Windows 10/11 (210 MB) and 64-bit Linux (174 MB); the page says the game runs on Vulkan, falling back to DirectX 11 on Windows, and is not yet signed.
Not publicly available: itch.io rating, Gross revenue.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| I built a top-down tactical shooter with its own engine, coding it with AI agents. The free demo is out (r/aigamedev) Reddit (u/catinrage) | Social post | Oct 25, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Scrim : Pre Alpha by catinrage itch.io | Store page | Oct 25, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) catinrage | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
- AI disclosure
- The developer's Reddit post says the code was written with Claude Code agents; the itch.io AI disclosure ticks AI Assisted, Graphics and Sounds but not Code. (Reddit (u/catinrage), itch.io)
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