Joe Simo

Day 18. Building the game I've dreamed of for 15 years with AI. I've learned how to build proper levels with AI. I take the design and the architecture, and AI helps me put it all together and check the balance. I made the first level of my game almost entirely by hand. I wanted to understand how it works and what I like, from how big the trees should be to how the textures tile. After a day digging around in the terrain tools it all made sense, and I could see how much of it could be automated by painting zones. Claude helped me a lot with the tileable textures. Matching the colors took a ton of iterations, and that was the hardest part of the whole level. For level two I took a different route. I built myself a simple HTML planner with a logical map of the level, where I place everything and design the layout. Painting a level and making it fun to play are two different jobs, so I kept the design for myself. We even made automated tests with Claude: 2D simulations that show which routes a player takes and how hard the level is. They're rough, but they give a real sense of how the level plays. Once the plan was ready, I handed everything to Claude, and 3-4 hours later I had a working level. It reused the patterns from my first level, scattered objects unevenly so nothing looks placed on a grid, and generated extra props whenever I asked. I showed it one example, it picked up what worked, and we turned that into a skill for the next levels. The video is a quick flight over level two, then how it got there, from my first sketch to the version I play now.