Zig-Zag Hero
A free survivor-like played in one dimension with two buttons: walk left or right to shoot, chain short and long presses into combos and outlast waves of enemies and bosses. A LittleJS Jam 3 entry whose developer says almost everything but the concept was done by a Claude coding agent.
Official site lightcone-games.itch.io, verified Nov 3, 2026. Linked from the developer's dev.to post.
Rights holder / original work: Duke Nukem (the original 2D Duke Nukem games)
The developer's dev.to post says the game's first hero sprite is “a clear reference to the classic original 2D Duke Nukem”. The game does not use the Duke Nukem name, and no source mentions Duke Nukem assets or a licence; we did not play the game. (dev.to (Simone Sturniolo))
VibeGameDB lists this game only to document that it was made with AI coding tools. We do not host it, we do not represent the rights holder, and listing it does not mean it is licensed.
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.ioReleased · LittleJS Jam 3 entryFree
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
- Play free — official siteBrowserReleased · Same game on Wavedash, with achievements and cloud saves for signed-in playersFree
Runs in a desktop browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Zig-Zag Hero
Zig-Zag Hero is a free browser action game set in a one-dimensional world. Your hero can only move left and right, and the main weapon fires automatically in the direction you face, so moving is also aiming at enemies and their bullets. Enemies drop experience; levelling up lets you choose passive or active skills, and active skills are triggered by combos, sequences of short and long left and right presses that work in either direction. You fight through increasingly ridiculous stages and bosses, such as a biker king and a galactic emperor, and unlock meta progression between runs. The page describes it as half Vampire Survivors, half One Finger Death Punch, and the developer says the look borrows from side-scrolling shooters and beat 'em ups. It was made for LittleJS Jam 3 (theme: zig-zag) with the LittleJS engine. The developer, Simone Sturniolo (Lightcone Games on itch.io), made it as an experiment in how far a game could go with just a Claude coding agent: the concept, levels, mechanics, enemies and most of the flavour text are the developer's, and almost everything else, including the coding, balancing, sprites and the music (written in the ChucK music language), was done by Claude. Free on itch.io and on Wavedash.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe AI use disclosure on the itch.io page says the game was made as an experiment in how far the developer could get with just a Claude coding agent: the concept design (level ideas, mechanics, enemies and bosses) and most of the flavour text are the developer's, and almost everything else (coding, balancing, sprites and music) was done by Claude, with no image or music generation models. In a dev.to post the developer adds that the challenge was basically no manual coding, using only a Claude Pro subscription for about a week; the post opens by discussing Claude Opus 5.5 before the developer decides to try it. Claude first built the mechanics with placeholder rectangles and, on its own initiative, a scripted bot that played the game at high speed and collected statistics used for balancing. Sprites were drawn by Claude through Claude Pixet, the developer's own pixel-art MCP tool (Claude also came up with drawing sprites as ASCII mapped to palette colours); the developer drew one boss sprite, the Biker King, by hand after Claude's attempts failed. Music was composed by Claude in the ChucK programming language. Claude moved all text into JSON files, which the developer then mostly rewrote. Neither source names a Claude product such as Claude Code.
- Developerdev.to post (1 Nov 2026): “My challenge was to make a game entirely with Claude. No separate AI models for image or music generation and basically no manual coding.” — dev.to (Simone Sturniolo)
The developer set the high-level concept and design and directed the rest qualitatively, usually without giving numbers; Claude built the mechanics and content and refined values with formulas and runs of its own test bot. Most of the work was done in a single conversation thread for stylistic consistency, which the developer says made token use grow; generating one level could take a whole five-hour session's worth of usage. Art came from the developer's Claude Pixet MCP tool, music from ChucK synths written by Claude, and the flavour text was mostly rewritten by the developer. Built with LittleJS, as the jam required.
- Engine / framework
- LittleJS
- Languages
- Not disclosed
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- 1 weeksDeveloper Reporteddev.to (Simone Sturniolo)
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“I made this game specifically as an experiment of how far I could get with making a game with just a Claude coding agent.”Verification notes: AI use from the AI use disclosure on the itch.io page (which ticks AI Assisted, Code, Graphics, Sounds and Text) and the developer's dev.to post (1 Nov 2026, 21:56 UTC), which links the itch.io and Wavedash pages. Publication (25 Oct 2026, 09:24 UTC) and the last update (1 Nov 2026, 15:29 UTC) from the itch.io page; the Wavedash page also gives 25 Oct 2026 and lists English. The LittleJS Jam 3 page (hosted by Frank Force Games) ran submissions from 2 Oct to 2 Nov 2026, allows AI for any purpose and requires LittleJS; on 4 Nov 2026 voting was still in progress, so there is no result yet. The development time is the developer's “about a week of my Pro subscription”. The comparisons with Vampire Survivors and One Finger Death Punch are the developer's description of the design. The dev.to post calls the first hero sprite “a clear reference to the classic original 2D Duke Nukem”; the game does not use that name and no source mentions Duke Nukem assets; a parody notice records the reference. Location from the developer's dev.to profile; team size is not stated. The game was not played; nothing in the sources describes AI used during play.
Development history
Published on itch.io (09:24 UTC) as an entry to LittleJS Jam 3; also released on Wavedash.
The itch.io page is updated (15:29 UTC) and the developer publishes a dev.to post on making the game with Claude.
LittleJS Jam 3 submissions close; voting was still in progress on 4 Nov 2026.
Officialitch.io (Frank Force Games)
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); the soundtrack is offered as free MP3 downloads.
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: itch.io rating, Gross revenue.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zig-Zag Hero by Lightcone Games itch.io | Store page | Oct 25, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| How I made a Game with Claude from scratch dev.to (Simone Sturniolo) | Devlog | Nov 1, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Play Zig-Zag Hero for Free on Wavedash Wavedash | Store page | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| LittleJS Jam 3 itch.io (Frank Force Games) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) Lightcone Games | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
