Melon Hop

Melon Hop

Melon Hop is a game about a bunny hopping around a garden eating watermelon while foxes try to catch it. The idea combines three things I like: bunnies are my favorite animal, watermelon is my favorite fruit, and foxes felt like the natural opposition to a bunny without being genuinely frightening. The basic structure - a grid, a chase, and something to collect - comes from Pac-Man, but I wanted to fill that familiar structure with things that felt like mine.

A few design decisions were especially important. The bunny moves by hopping rather than gliding, tile to tile with a real jump arc and squash-and-stretch landing. This mattered because the bunny's movement was one of the main things separating Melon Hop from Pac-Man's smooth movement. I also chose foxes over wolves. Wolves felt too much like real predators for the cute, chill tone I wanted, while foxes felt mischievous and fit the pastel pink-and-white aesthetic better. The foxes also move slightly slower than the bunny, which keeps a sixty-second round from ending immediately and makes the game feel relaxed instead of frantic.

Two moments stood out in my collaboration with Claude Code. The initial build was actually better than I expected. I described the mechanics, tone, and visual style, and Claude Code interpreted most of those ideas surprisingly well. The second moment required more direction. My first attempt at the bunny's hop animation came back as a smooth glide between tiles, which defeated one of the main ideas behind the game. I had to specifically point out that it was gliding instead of hopping. Once corrected, the movement finally looked like what I had pictured: a real arc and landing that actually read as a bunny hopping. Did I author this game? Less of the execution than I would like. I did not write the code, and Claude Code made many implementation decisions. However, the creative decisions - the bunny, watermelon, foxes, chill tone, hopping movement, slower enemies, and pastel aesthetic - were mine. I would describe my role as authorship of the concept, creative direction, and feel rather than the technical execution. AI disclosure: I used Claude Desktop to brainstorm and shape the concept and Claude Code to build the game through two main rounds of prompting. The first created the core game, while the second focused on correcting the bunny's hopping animation. I also worked with Claude to organize, draft, and refine this report based on my own experience building the game and the decisions I made throughout the process.