The Ceiling

My game is about trying to move forward when progress keeps getting harder and different challenges arise. I combined the feeling of being trapped in the backrooms with a King Kong style climb, where the goal is to reach the ceiling and escape. I chose this idea because I wanted the player to feel lost and stressed while trying to keep a cool. The climb represents how reaching higher achievements can bring more pressure. Finishing one challenge does not mean the next one will be easier.

One of my original prompts was, “The player, single player game going up a latter basically like king kong.” Another was, “A round lasts could be infinate with many rooms if one dosent use the clues or contuines going sideways on a floor they will never advance.” These prompts explained the experience I wanted to give the player, difficulty but with an inevitable outcome. One design decision I would defend is making each layer harder than the last. The five layers have 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20 rooms. The first layer introduces the game and later layers make finding the correct path harder. I wanted reaching a new floor to feel like an achievement while creating stress about what comes next as in “how could this get any worse” as it slowly does. I rejected the first version because it was too easy and pointed the player toward where they needed to go.

Another decision was mixing rooms with clues and rooms that are blank. If every room gave useful information the player could follow directions without thinking just moving forward, that wasnt the point of the game, constant moving forward and brainstorming. Empty rooms make the player question whether they missed something or are wasting time. The clues provide a way forward. I chose the ceiling as the escape because it gives the climb a clear purpose. Breaking through it after being trapped makes the ending feel earned.

The collaboration with Claude was real when it expanded my ideas in ways I had not wanted it to but noticed it came from a lack of information on my part. It created different clues and added falling objects during the ladder climb. I had focused mainly on finding the right stairs so those objects added a challenge that fit the tense feeling I wanted, although I never came up with those ideas myself. This was better than my original request because it made the climb itself more difficult that just added on to the game and its main purpose.

The collaboration was less successful when Claude made the route too obvious. I had to overrule that direction because having a working game was not enough. It needed to create the feeling I described. Claude could follow my instructions without fully understanding my intention. I think I authored the idea the decisions about what belonged in the game. I did not write the code and Claude contributed ideas that changed the result. Still I consider it my game because I set its direction and judged whether each version matched my goal.

Claude was used in the making of this game, as well as used to help reconstruct my ideas when writing these 400-600 words.