Hey!

Since a couple of weeks, I've prototyped this game.
The concept is super simple:
Solve puzzles with tiles, gather ressources, improve your village.

For now, I've focused on the onboarding, and the main mechanics so there's only a few puzzles to solve for now.

I would love to hear your feedback about it, to know what you understand or not, what should I improve or drop ?

You can play it here.

Thank you!

Hey,

Solo dev, my first commercial game launches on Steam in a couple of months. The game is "Yet Another Incremental Game (but this time about coding)" — a coding-themed idle game where you mash your keyboard to write code, manage 6 AI agents that type for you, train in 11 programming languages, and eventually build a machine grid that automates everything.

Two things make this project unusual for an AI-gamedev post:

1. 95%+ of the code was written by Claude Code (Anthropic's CLI). I architected and reviewed; it implemented.
2. The game has zero generated image assets in-game. No sprites, no textures, no AI art, no PSD files. Every in-game visual is a React component with Tailwind CSS. Marketing assets (capsule, key art, trailer) were done with help from friends — humans, not AI.

I'm posting because this sub deserves more posts about how AI is integrated than that AI was used, and I want to discuss specifics with people doing similar work.

The numbers, upfront

• 13 months of dev (in parallel with freelance work, no full-time period)
• 4,313 wishlists on Steam (4,892 adds, 580 deletes — 11.85% delete rate, in healthy range)
• Demo live on Steam since Feb 2026
• Did the Feb 2026 Steam Next Fest — biggest single traffic event (6,623 page visits)
• Single channel that converted: Reddit (others: LinkedIn, X, TikTok, YouTube — all flat)
• Launch in a couple of months

If you're curious about the marketing post-mortem, it's a separate write-up. This post is about the dev workflow.

Stack

• React 19 + Zustand + TypeScript
• Vite (web), Electron (Steam build), Expo (mobile, untouched yet)
• break_eternity.js for big numbers (Decimal class)
• PrismJS for code syntax in-game
• Tailwind CSS for everything visual
• Vitest for testing

No game engine. Web stack shipped to Steam via Electron.

1. Code with Claude Code (95%+ of the codebase)

This is the part that actually compounded. I wasn't doing "vibe coding" without thinking — closer to senior dev pair programming, where I architect, define behavior, and review while Claude implements.

What worked:

• Project CLAUDE.md as the source of truth. A 50+ line document covering architecture, performance rules, naming conventions, tech-specific gotchas (Decimal arithmetic, Zustand selector rules, setInterval over rAF for progress bars). Claude reads it on every session, which means implementation consistency was tighter than any human freelance onboarding I've experienced.
• Decimal arithmetic discipline. Incremental games need big-number support, and you cannot use native + - * / operators on Decimal instances or you get silent number truncation. I documented "always use .add(), .sub(), .mul() etc." in CLAUDE.md and Claude never violated it across hundreds of changes. Hard for human juniors to do the same.
• 100 Steam achievements in one session. Declarative condition functions + polling service + display config. From a spec I wrote, Claude generated all 100 conditions correctly in ~30 minutes. Manual estimate would have been a full day, probably two.
• State migrations. Every persisted state shape change needs a migration. Claude is excellent at writing these from old + new schema diff because the task is mechanical and well-defined.

What didn't:

• Game balance. AI cannot tell you whether your prestige cost curve feels right. That's playtesting + intuition. I had to do all balance tuning by hand, with spreadsheets and gut.
• Performance debugging in render loops. When something stutters, Claude tends to suggest "useMemo this, useCallback that" generically. Real perf bugs in incremental games (high-frequency updates, ref-based DOM mutations) require profiling with the actual DevTools. AI doesn't have your performance panel open.

Concrete prompt pattern that worked best:

>"Read [file path] and [related file path]. Current behavior: X. Desired behavior: Y. Modify only [scope]. Do not refactor surrounding code."

Removing "while we're at it" refactor temptation cut my regression rate significantly.

2. UI design with Claude Design (the recent breakthrough)

This part I started later. Claude Design (the design-focused workflow) was where I went deep on UI exploration. Genuine before/after improvements:

• Layout hierarchy fixes (the most-clicked screen had progression info buried below)
• Theme system (multiple themes shipping in the next demo update)
• Micro-interactions and feedback states (loading, success, locked/unlocked upgrade visual states)

What clicked: treating Claude as a junior designer with strong knowledge of patterns. I'd describe the problem, what feels off, what I want users to feel, and iterate on solutions. Way better than the typical "redesign this screen" prompt that produces generic AI-design output.

3. Visuals: the "no assets" approach

Zero generated image assets in the game itself. No sprites, no textures, no exported PSDs, no Midjourney runs. Every in-game visual is:

• React components styled with Tailwind
• CSS animations and transitions
• SVG icons (Lucide React)
• Animated gradients, color, and motion as the visual language

This was a constraint-driven choice — I'm not a visual artist, budget was zero, and I didn't want to fight the AI-art generation iteration cycle. It became a deliberate brand direction. The game looks distinctly "code editor" because it is a code editor. No textures means no art-style mismatch when I add features.

For marketing assets (Steam capsule, key art, trailer), I had help from friends — humans, not AI. The capsule and trailer benefit from real visual taste that I don't have on my own and that pure React rendering couldn't deliver.

Trade-off: in-game visual flair is limited. Mitigated by: theme system (shipping in next demo update), animated gradients, selective use of color and motion. People who like minimal / UI-forward incrementals (Universal Paperclips, A Dark Room) seem to vibe with it. People expecting AAA visuals don't.

4. Sound: AI-generated, still rough

100% AI-generated SFX (ElevenLabs SFX, a couple of others). No licensed assets, no human-produced sounds.

Honest assessment: still pretty bad. Inconsistent, sometimes too synthetic, sometimes too random. I have no clear workflow for tagging + retrieving sound that fits a specific UI event, so I keep regenerating.

This is the area I most want to improve before launch. If you have a working AI-SFX workflow for game UI events, I want to hear about it.

5. Marketing video pipeline

I built a Remotion-based pipeline (programmatic video in React) that generates short-form marketing videos:

• Code overlays animated frame-by-frame
• Hook text generated by Claude API (50-100 hooks per pass)
• ElevenLabs voice-over for some videos
• Custom backoffice picks best hook, pairs with footage, schedules

Pipeline ships ~3-5 videos per generation. Quality varies. Cost per attempt = near zero, which lets me iterate on hooks fast.

Honest stat: marketing videos haven't moved my wishlists in a measurable way. The pipeline produces volume. The audience hasn't followed yet. Reddit is still my only converting channel. Sharing because I see lots of "AI marketing video" posts that don't show the negative result.

Currently working around TikTok Content Posting API limits (unaudited = no description carry-over) with browser automation. Brittle but functional.

6. Localization

Claude first-pass EN→FR on ~3000 strings, manually reviewed. ~95% correct on first pass. 2 days instead of 2 weeks.

Things I'd love to discuss with this sub

1. AI-SFX workflows that actually work for game UI events — taggable, retrievable, consistent style. ElevenLabs SFX is half-there. What do you use?
2. TikTok Content Posting API audit — anyone here got DIRECT_POST approved as a solo indie? Worth the 2-8 week wait or stay on Playwright automation?
3. The "no in-game image assets" choice — anyone else shipped a Steam game with pure React/CSS/SVG visuals? Curious if it's a viable indie path or a dead end. My gut says it's underused.
4. CLAUDE.md prompt-engineering for game dev — I have a personal collection of project-rules templates that worked across this game. Open to open-sourcing if there's interest.
5. Balance tuning — did anyone figure out a workflow where AI helps with balance, not just code? I tried describing curves to Claude, feeding it spreadsheet data — nothing reliable. Curious if you cracked it.

Game's on Steam if you want to see the output (Yet Another Incremental Game, but this time about coding). Demo's free. The post is the workflow + honest numbers, not the pitch — happy to dig into any specific bit in comments.

— Tristan / Raclette Games

Hey,

I'm a solo dev about a couple of months away from launching my first game on Steam, a coding-themed incremental called Yet Another Incremental Game (but this time about coding). My Steam page has been live for 7 months. Before pushing the launch button, I wanted to be honest with myself: what actually worked?

So I pulled my daily wishlist graph from Steamworks and mapped every single marketing action I took against it. The result is humbling. Sharing in case it's useful for anyone else heading into their first launch.

**TL;DR**

- 4,892 adds, 580 deletes → **4,313 net wishlists** in 7 months (11.85% delete rate, within healthy range)

- **Single channel that worked: Reddit.** I tried LinkedIn, Twitter/X, TikTok, YouTube. None of them moved the curve. Zero.

- **Two events = ~80% of all wishlists:**

- r/incremental_games announce post + incremental.db pickup (Oct 2025): ~1,500 wishlists in 10 days

- Steam Next Fest (Feb 2026): ~1,800-2,000 wishlists in 2 weeks

- **3.5 months of dead air between them.** Posting kept happening, the curve stayed flat.

- I built a side game during the dead zone. It got 31 upvotes on r/incremental_games and produced zero wishlist transfer to my main game.

- this post has been redacted with the help of IA

---

**The two mountains and the valley**

Looking at the curve, it's two clear mountains separated by a long flat valley. Let me walk through each phase.

**🏔️ Spike #1–October 2025 (peak ~270 adds/day, ~1,500 wishlists in 10 days)**

What I did:

- Oct 6: Posted on r/incremental_games announcing the Steam page → 220 upvotes, 51 comments

- Oct 7-8: Cross-posted to r/SoloDevelopment and r/IndieDev → modest scores (11, 13 ups)

What actually drove the spike:

- The r/incremental_games post itself. That's where my audience literally lives.

- **Someone (not me) added the game to incremental.db** after seeing my post a year ago. I didn't even know that the website existed. It kept funneling traffic for over a week without me lifting a finger.

Takeaway: one excellent post in a perfectly targeted niche sub beats ten mediocre posts in adjacent ones, by an order of magnitude. And community-maintained databases in your niche are a hidden multiplier. Find yours and check if you can be listed.

**🏜️ Dead zone — November 2025 → mid-February 2026 (~3.5 months, baseline <30 adds/day)**

What I did during this period:

- r/AppBusiness post (about a customer milestone, not the game itself) — 21 ups, 0 wishlist impact

- r/react "I made a game with React" — 13 ups, no measurable impact

- r/vibecoding, r/SoloDevelopment "is my wishlist count normal?" — flat

- **3 weeks building FORM∆: Mutation, a smaller incremental side game** — got 31 upvotes on r/incremental_games. **Zero wishlist transfer to my main game.**

This is the part that stings the most. I told myself "more presence = more visibility." The graph disagrees. The audience for my side game didn't follow me to the main game. The 3 weeks I spent on FORM∆ would have been better spent on a single big marketing beat for the main game (devlog video, streamer outreach, capsule polish).

Takeaway: posts in adjacent dev communities (r/react, r/vibecoding, r/SoloDevelopment) generate karma but not wishlists. **Devs don't wishlist incremental games. Players do.** Know which sub you're posting in.

**🏔️ Spike #2 — Steam Next Fest, Feb 22 - Mar 5, 2026 (peaks at ~430 adds/day, ~1,800-2,000 wishlists in 2 weeks)**

This was the big one. The Next Fest alone drove 6,623 visits to my Steam page (per my Traffic Breakdown report) — by far the single biggest source lifetime. My demo had launched 2 weeks prior on Feb 9, which (a) was the entry ticket and (b) unlocked Steam's Free Demos Hub as a passive traffic source (1,589 lifetime visits from there).

I coordinated posts on r/IndieDev, r/IndieGaming, and r/incremental_games on Feb 22. They contributed, but Steam's own surfaces (livestream slots, "playing now," related lists, daily emails) did most of the lift.

Takeaway: Next Fest is the single highest-ROI marketing event Steam gives indies. Don't burn it early. Make sure your demo is genuinely playable and your capsule converts before opting in. You only get one Next Fest.

**📉 Post-Next-Fest decay — March-April 2026**

I tried to keep the momentum. Nothing worked:

- r/SoloDevelopment "[RANT] WTH with steam achievements" — 20 upvotes, devs loved it, **no wishlist impact**

- r/itchio "Released on itch.io" — 37 upvotes, but itch users ≠ Steam buyers, **no transfer**

- 2 follow-up attempts on r/incremental_games

---

**Top 3 mistakes**

1. **Building a side game during the dead zone.** 3 weeks of work, 0 main-game wishlist transfer. Should have been a marketing beat instead.
2. **Cross-posting the same body across r/IndieDev + r/IndieGaming on the same day.** Mods notice, algo notices, engagement dilutes.
3. **Posting in dev-focused subs (r/react, r/vibecoding) thinking it'd convert.** Those are great for credibility, useless for wishlists.

**Top 3 things that worked**

1. **One great post in a perfectly targeted niche sub.** ~1,500 wishlists from a single thread.
2. **Releasing the demo before Next Fest**, even when it felt rough. Free Demos Hub + Next Fest eligibility = unlocked.
3. **Letting the community do work for me.** Someone added the game to incremental.db without being asked. Worth scouting community-maintained databases in your niche.

**What I'd do differently next time**

- Plan an **event-driven calendar** (one big beat every 6 weeks) instead of opportunistic posting.

- Skip the side game. Use the dead zone for assets: video devlogs, streamer outreach, press kit, capsule iteration.

- Get a second pair of eyes on the **capsule + first 30 seconds of the demo** before any festival.

- Build comment karma in target subs **before** posting promo, not after.

- Pick **one language** for marketing (mine is English on Steam: 21% US, 1.5% FR audience, but I'd posted half my content in French. Wasted effort.)

---

**Where I am going into launch**

4,313 wishlists, ~2 months to release. The often-cited "safe" threshold for Steam's launch-day algo boost is around 7-10k. I'm at 43-60% of that depending on who you ask.

This post is part of the pre-launch push. Not too proud to ask: if any of this was useful, wishlisting helps me hit that threshold

Happy to answer anything specific in the comments, exact numbers, what I tried in detail, what the demo conversion looks like, anything.