Released "Outpost Evergreen": A retro colony sim built from scratch in one week with Claude, Gemini, and Suno.
I just released my latest web game, Outpost Evergreen, on itch.io. We built this entirely from scratch in about a week's time. I wanted to share a breakdown of the architecture and how the AI cooperative workflow handled a surprisingly complex simulation on such a tight schedule.
The Tech & The Team:
- Director & Pixel Engineer: Me. (Game design, overall project direction, and manually hand-editing the final pixel sprites and code adjustments).
- Engine Architecture: Claude (Opus 4.6). Handled the heavy lifting of the core game loop, the HTML5 Canvas rendering, and the terrain buffer system.
- Additional Coding, Logic & Art Generation: Gemini. Refined the math, balanced the systems, tightened the logic for the state machines, and generated some of the base image outputs that I then hand-edited and pixel-pushed into the final spritesheets.
- Audio Design: Suno.
How We Handled The Complexity in 7 Days: Outpost Evergreen is an autonomous colony sim. The colonists aren't directly controlled. They run on a complex state machine driven by individual traits (brave, industrious, idle, cautious).
Instead of traditional RTS controls, the player acts as a macro-manager. You place "Directives" (Explore, Gather, Attack) on the map, which act as bounties. The colonists continuously evaluate their surroundings, their traits, and the active bounties to decide their next action.
- The Engine: The entire game runs in a single HTML/JS file.
- Performance: To keep the frame rate smooth while rendering a 50x50 tile map with fog of war and dozens of autonomous entities, Claude and I implemented a static terrain buffer system. The static ground and explored fog are drawn to an off-screen canvas, which is blitted to the main screen in a single draw call. Only dynamic entities (water shimmer, colonists, worker bots, alien threats, and laser effects) are calculated and drawn per frame.
- Progression: The game features a full XP system. Colonists rank up into distinct classes (Atomwright, Wayfinder, Ace), unlocking access to tiered vehicles from the Motor Pool.
AI are not just code or art generators, but collaborative engineering partners. You set the physical constraints, guide the logic, and let the system synthesize the output.
You can play the web build here: https://misteratompunk.itch.io/oeg