Fat Cat: Diet Disaster

Chloe Arcade Game Statement

My name is Chloe. I'm a second-year psych major in the Bouvé College, and I have a minor in AI. This game is about a diabetic cat named Chonkers who longs to get into the cookie jars, but the owner needs to get Chonkers on a diet. I chose this idea because my friend recently got a cat, and he's got some extra pounds on him, so cats were on my mind. As for the cookie part, my friends know me for loving cookies and baking. My friends constantly come over to my place to eat the cookies I bake. So I combined the two in the game.

The original prompt I gave Claude was: “An arcade game called Fat Cat. The player controls their avatar, a person, using the arrow buttons and space to feed. The challenge is a fat diabetic cat that needs to be on a diet but keeps getting into the cookie jar. A round lasts 45 seconds and ends if the cat eats too many cookies. The feel I'm after is funny and chaotic.” In the first version of the game, Chonkers got fat when attacked with broccoli, but it made more sense for him to get fat when he ate cookies and skinny when he ate broccoli. Then the game was too easy; Chonkers was slow, and I could win every time. So I asked Claude to make him bolt away right after a broccoli hit. It was more challenging, but still a bit easy, so I had Claude add the letter p to speed up the person. Later I realized the “p” was an awkward key to use because it's on the same side of the arrow. So I had Claude change it to a double-click. The game was still too easy, so I asked Claude to make it harder and add obstacles. But with the obstacles, the cat got stuck on them, so I told Claude that “the cat should not also get blocked at the obstacles; the cat can pass through them and add meowing noises”. This was the second time I asked Claude to add a cat noise to the game. In the first prompt, I said: “add meowing noise when the cat gets fed broccoli.” The meow was never added. The last step I did was add levels to the game, where each level adds an obstacle, and by level 5 all obstacles have been added. When I played it, I got past level 1 but died on level 2, which brought me back to level 1. I found that frustrating even though thats how most arcade games operate. So I asked Claude to keep me at the same level when I died.

In terms of whether I consider the game mine. I think I was a co-author. I provided the basis for an idea; Claude produced a base to work from, and then I altered it, constantly asking Claude to make changes. Claude made creative decisions and chose the colors and details as it wanted, and I chose to keep it, but

after that first prompt, everything was editing; Claude didn't add new ideas unless I told it to.