Ghost Glide

Ghost Glide – Artist’s Statement

I wanted Ghost Glide to be a game that was extremely easy to understand but still satisfying enough that someone would want to play again. The player controls a small ghost in a colorful Halloween arena, collecting candy while avoiding pumpkins, bats, and floating lanterns. As the round goes on, the hazards become faster and appear more often. I chose Halloween because it gave a clear visual theme, but I wasn’t going for a scary game. I wanted it to feel playful and colorful, and went for a more cartoony theme.

One of my main design decisions was keeping the controls extremely simple. The player only needs WASD or the arrow keys to move. I did not want extra attacks or complicated systems because the point of the game is surviving through movement. I also limited the game to one power up which is a temporary shield that protects the ghost from one collision. Adding several power ups could have made the game more complex, but I thought it would also take away from the simplicity.

Another important decision came after I played Claude’s first version. The game worked, but collecting candy didn’t feel rewarding enough to me. The score increased, but there was not enough visual evidence that the player was making progress. I asked Claude to make every collected candy add on to a small glowing trail behind the player. As the player collects more candy, the trail becomes longer. I was thinking about simple games like Snake, where progress physically changes what you see on the screen instead of existing only as a number. I also asked for the trail to scatter when the player loses. That made collecting candy feel more satisfying without changing the actual difficulty or collision rules.

Working with Claude was different from a normal programming project because I did not write the HTML or JavaScript myself. Claude was especially useful at turning a detailed description into a working game very quickly. The first version already captured most of the atmosphere and mechanics I had described, which surprised me. At the same time, playing the game showed me something that I could not fully judge from a prompt alone: whether an action actually felt rewarding. That was where I had to step back in and change the design.

Two prompts that guided the development were:

“The tone should be playful, colorful, cozy, and slightly spooky, taking visual inspiration from games like Fall Guys rather than something more realistic.”

And:

“Each candy collected should add a small glowing spirit orb to a trailing ghost tail behind the player. The trail should grow longer as the player collects more candy, so progress is visually obvious and satisfying.”

I still consider the game mine, although not in the same way I would if I had written every line of code. Claude authored most of the implementation, but I decided what the game should be, what it should feel like, and what needed to change after I played it. This project made authorship feel less like physically creating every component and more like making the decisions that give those components a purpose.

AI Disclosure

I used Claude Desktop to help develop and narrow the game concept and Claude Code to generate the code for the game. I completed one main revision after playing the first version. I asked Claude to keep the game in the same browser page and changed how collecting candy felt in the game by adding a growing spirit trail that scatters when the player loses. I used AI for coding, implementation, and some brainstorming, while I made most of the decisions about the concept, mechanics, difficulty, visual style, and revisions.