Last Light

Last Light is an arcade-style exploration game about curiosity and risk. The player explores ancient ruins, searching for three artifacts with a limited torch while avoiding guardians. After finding the artifacts and reaching the treasure chamber, the ruins begin collapsing, the guardians become more aggressive, and the player has seconds to escape. I wanted to capture what makes international exploration and travel exciting to me: discovering unfamiliar places while never knowing exactly what is around the corner.

One of my deliberate design decisions was making movement simple. I found Lunar Lander difficult because controlling rotation, thrust, and momentum simultaneously required more precision than I enjoyed. Instead, I chose arrow-key movement and later added sprinting with Shift. In the final version, sprinting is faster but drains stamina quickly, creating a strategic tradeoff without making basic movement complicated.

Another decision was pushing back against making exploration too easy. An earlier version had an arrow pointing toward everything the player needed to find. I asked Claude to remove this and only reveal the compass after all three artifacts are collected. I wanted players to explore rather than follow a marker. However, I did not want exploration to become frustrating, so I made the world only slightly larger than the screen. The torch, guardian sightlines, and time limit create pressure while giving room to win.

Claude was useful when it identified consequences of my ideas that I had not considered. When I requested sprinting, Claude suggested making sprinting less fuel-efficient by decreasing stamina. This was a great idea that I incorporated. However, I did not let Claude determine the direction of the game. I either rejected or modified suggestions throughout development, including its original airport concept. I thought an airport would be too basic and visually boring, so I rejected it. The process worked best when Claude acted as a designer and builder I could react to rather than my creative director.

3 prompts I used:

●​ “Instead of an airport, you are exploring an ancient city and have to find clues to a treasure.”

●​ “I like the concept, but I have a few issues. Firstly, the visuals are not compelling. It's just shapes. I want graphics of the artifacts, torches, villains, and the final temple.

Reduce the number of artifacts to 3 to make this work. Also, the torch dies slowly. Reduce the number of refills and so it dies faster.”

●​ “How about the blue arrow only guides you to the temple once you've found all 3 artifacts.”

I did not author Last Light by writing its 1,177 lines of code, but I consider the game mine in a partial sense. Claude determined which of my ideas could be implemented, while I decided what experience those ideas should create. Claude also built upon my ideas with small suggestions, which I occasionally accepted, but usually with my own modifications. I chose the premise, difficulty, movement, characters, and the feeling I wanted the game to produce. I believe my authorship did not produce every component. Instead, I made and defended the decisions that gave those components a purpose.

AI Disclosure: I used Claude Code for brainstorming, coding, implementation, debugging, and refinement. I worked through 17 major rounds of iteration, repeatedly testing and requesting changes. I corrected and rejected several ideas, as mentioned earlier, and pushed back with Claude to make the game fit the design and level of fun that I was aiming for. I also ran out of credits near the end of the project, but the game was polished by then.