Games and AI
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Goblin Express Academy

A 12-week course for game developers who want to build real games with AI. You'll spend it building one game, a goblin courier delivery game called Goblin Express, with Claude Code: first in the browser, then in Godot, Unity or Unreal.

00 · Orientation

Now hiring couriers

To:Prospective courier (you) From:Madam Grizzletooth, Proprietor Re:The job

You know how games get made. Good. Goblin Express needs people who can tell a game that's working from one that only looks finished, and that judgment is yours already. What changes here is who does the typing: an AI agent called Claude, directed by you.

Every courier on the payroll builds the same game, Goblin Express, in the same order. So the problems you run into are ones we've already filed incident reports for, and the fixes are on the page.

You'll have a playable game in your browser on Day 1. In Week 6 it ships to itch.io. By Week 12 it runs in the engine of your choice, and you'll know how to bring all of this back to your studio.

— G.

This course is for you if

  • You make games for a living, as a programmer or an artist, and you've done little or nothing with AI agents.
  • You're on a Mac or a Windows PC. You don't need to be a command-line person: every command you need is on the page, in both versions, ready to copy.
  • You're busy. The course asks for about 6 to 8 hours a week: four lessons of 60 to 90 minutes, plus one longer build lab.

01 · The route

Map of Gobbleton

Gobbleton has six districts, and each one is two weeks of the course. Every district opens a new delivery area in the game.

  1. Weeks 1–2

    The Depot

    Goblin Express HQ and warehouse. One route, one parcel, and your first game.

    2 modules open

  2. Weeks 3–4

    Muckmarket

    A crowded market of stalls and carts. Pedestrians, collisions and tighter timers.

    Opens later

  3. Weeks 5–6

    Sootstacks

    The smoky factory quarter. Conveyor belts, machinery, and a lot of art to generate.

    Opens later

  4. Weeks 7–8

    The Heights

    Rickety towers built on towers. This is where the game goes 3D.

    Opens later

  5. Weeks 9–10

    The Underbog

    Sewers and tunnels under the city, where you rebuild Gobbleton in a game engine.

    Opens later

  6. Weeks 11–12

    Bosshold

    The boss's fortress. The final delivery, and your capstone.

    Opens later

02 · The syllabus

Twelve weeks, four phases

Each week adds one feature to Goblin Express that puts that week's lesson to work. A ★ marks a playable milestone build.

Phase 1 · Foundations

  1. Week 1 ★

    Your first AI-built game

    Install Claude Code on Mac or Windows. How an agent works. Asking for the approach before the code. A playable game on Day 1.

    In the game: a one-file delivery game, then the Depot level with dashing and screen shake.

  2. Week 2

    Context and control Coming soon

    CLAUDE.md and project structure. The IDE extension and reviewing diffs. Git as a save system: commit, branch, revert.

    In the game: a project CLAUDE.md, a real repo structure, and the commit-before-chaos habit.

  3. Week 3

    Closing the loop Coming soon

    Claude runs the game, takes screenshots, drives the browser, writes tests and debugs on its own.

    In the game: fragile parcels, a condition meter, and automated playtests.

Phase 2 · 2D web games

  1. Week 4

    2D with PixiJS Coming soon

    Game loop, state, input and collisions without an engine. Agent-friendly architecture and data-driven design.

    In the game: Muckmarket crowds, explosive parcels, and parcels that are alive.

  2. Week 5

    2D asset generation Coming soon

    Fal, Scenario and Layer for sprites, tiles, UI and animation frames. Keeping a consistent style. Audio. Licensing, provenance and store AI-disclosure rules.

    In the game: generated art and audio, a Snag model sheet, and a provenance log for every asset.

  3. Week 6 ★

    Extending Claude Coming soon

    Skills, hooks, MCP and subagents. Wiring asset generation into Claude's workflow.

    In the game: a new-parcel skill and cursed parcels. The 2D game ships to itch.io.

Phase 3 · 3D

  1. Week 7

    3D with Three.js Coming soon

    Cameras, lighting, physics, and the problems agents only run into in 3D.

    In the game: Gobbleton goes 3D. The Heights, jumping and physics.

  2. Week 8 ★

    3D asset generation Coming soon

    Text- and image-to-3D, cleanup in Blender through MCP, rigging and animation, glTF and polygon budgets.

    In the game: a rigged, animated 3D Snag, plus heavy and floaty parcels.

Phase 4 · Engines and shipping

  1. Week 9

    Godot Coming soon

    The most agent-friendly engine: text-based scenes and GDScript.

    In the game: the core loop rebuilt in Godot.

  2. Week 10

    Unity and Unreal Coming soon

    Unity's AI and MCP tooling. Unreal's C++ and Python editor scripting, and the limits around Blueprints. You pick your capstone engine.

    In the game: a port to Unity or Unreal.

  3. Week 11

    Production-ready Coming soon

    Performance, testing at scale, parallel agents, CI, security, platform builds and store compliance.

    In the game: saves, leaderboards and store-ready builds.

  4. Week 12 ★

    Capstone Coming soon

    Ship the capstone. A retrospective on managing cost and rolling these practices out to a studio.

    In the game: Bosshold, the final delivery.

03 · Before you start

The paperwork

  • A paid Claude plan (Pro or higher), or an Anthropic Console account with API billing set up. Claude Code needs one of these. A lesson on managing usage and cost is planned.
  • A Mac on macOS 13 or later, or a 64-bit PC on Windows 10 version 1809 or later. No Node.js required.
  • Game development experience. No AI experience needed.

AI tools change fast. Each lesson keeps the lasting ideas separate from the click-by-click walkthroughs, and shows the date its Claude Code steps were last checked against the official docs.