How to make a game with AI using Claude Code and Ludo.ai

To make a game with AI, split the work in two: a coding agent such as Claude Code writes the game's code, and an asset generator makes the art and audio the game needs. Ludo.ai is the asset half. It generates sprites and animations, images, 3D models, sound effects, music and voices, and its ludo command line tool lets Claude Code generate them and save the files straight into the game's folder. It is not a one-prompt game maker: you still decide what the game is, ask for each piece, approve the assets you keep and playtest. That is how Grave Night, a top-down pixel-art arena game with three nights and a boss, was finished: Claude Code wrote every line of code, every sprite, texture, sound effect, music track and voice line came from Ludo, and the game is free to play on itch.io.

Last updated November 2026

1. 1Plan a small game and its asset list

   Write down what the game is before you generate anything, and keep the first version small. Grave Night started as a 629-line browser game: a pumpkin knight fighting skeletons and zombies in endless waves. The plan to finish it was short: 3 nights of 3 waves, then a boss, a different look for each night, and a victory screen. Turn the plan into an asset list per piece of the game. For each night: a ground texture, eight props and two fence tiles (a horizontal one and a side one). For the boss, the Skeleton King: a character picture, a 3D model, a rig, six moves (idle, walk, slam, summon, hit, death) in 8 directions, his sound effects, his music and a few voice lines. The list is what you generate in step 4 and what you hand to the coding agent in step 5.

2. 2Give Claude Code the Ludo CLI

   Install the CLI and log in: npm install -g @ludoai/cli, then ludo login, which opens Ludo.ai in your browser to authorize the terminal (it works on Pro and Studio). Then run ludo skill install, which adds the Ludo skill to Claude Code so it knows the commands and looks up only the ones it needs through --help. Inside the game's folder, ludo init writes a .ludo.json where you can set an output folder, a default engine and max_credits, a spending budget the CLI refuses to go past. Any command takes --dry-run to print its price without running it. If your assistant cannot run commands (Claude Desktop, for example), connect the MCP server instead: the URL https://mcp.ludo.ai/mcp with the header Authorization: ApiKey YOUR_API_KEY, using an API key from the web app. The CLI page and the MCP page have the setup for each client.

3. 3Fix one art style and one character route

   Consistency comes from repeating the same choices, so decide them once. Every Grave Night ludo image create call used the same art style, 32-Bit Pixel (--art-style "32-Bit Pixel"), and every night's prop prompt ended with the same clause, "one single object isolated on a plain flat background", so the props cut out cleanly. Characters that must turn in 8 directions take the 3D route: a character picture (ludo model create-image), a 3D model (ludo model create), a rig (ludo model rig), then Directional Sprites (ludo sprite directional), which renders the same rigged model from every direction, so the directions line up. The boss's first concept was made with ludo image generate-with-style from a screenshot of the game, so he was in the game's look before he had a model.

4. 4Generate in batches, then pick

   Ask for several takes and choose. --n 4 makes four variations of an image, and ludo batch jobs.json runs a whole list of different generations side by side, checking the price of the list first; one failed item does not stop the others, and a failed generation is refunded. Night 1's set, "the pumpkin patch", was three commands: the ground texture (ludo image create --image-type texture --perspective Top-Down --art-style "32-Bit Pixel" --n 4), one batch of the eight props and the fence, and one batch that cut out the eleven picks with ludo image remove-background and added the side fence. It cost 27.5 credits and about six minutes. For characters, ludo sprite directional-preview is free: the boss's moves were chosen from free previews of the move presets before any sheet was paid for. Everything of the Skeleton King's that ships in the game, from his concept picture to six moves in 8 directions, his sound effects, his music and three voice lines, came to 92.5 credits. Every file the CLI saves is logged in ludo-assets.json with the command, the job id and the cost. In Grave Night's build, a second Claude session ran these commands beside the coding session and handed the picks over in work orders; with the skill installed, Claude Code can run the same commands itself.

5. 5Have Claude Code wire the assets into the game

   Hand the coding agent the picks with a plain work order: which file is which, what each is for, how big it should look next to the hero, and what must keep working. Ask for a small re-runnable tool rather than one-off edits, and tell it to leave the Ludo originals untouched. In Grave Night, Claude Code wrote tools/build_level.py, which turns a night's Ludo files into game images (chunky 4-pixel blocks, hard edges, trimmed, sized next to the knight) and manifest entries, so nights 2 and 3 went through the same tool. For the boss it wrote tools/build_king.py, which brought his 48 sprite sheets to one size and ground line and recorded, for each facing, the frame where his sword lands, then the boss logic itself: two phases, a telegraphed slam, summons and a health bar. The loaders, the animation states and the sound mixing are all agent-written code.

6. 6Playtest, measure, and fix with proof

   Play it yourself or have someone play it, and write the notes down word for word. Grave Night's first playtest note began: "The sound of the sword slash and the other attack does not match what is happening on the screen. The timing is off." Measuring the build frame by frame showed the hit sound fired 6 to 7 frames (100 to 117 ms) before the blade crossed the enemy, and one hit sound clicked because its file started mid-waveform. That measurement went into the work order, and Claude Code moved each impact to the contact frame, faded every sound file in and out from zero (keeping the Ludo originals), added a limiter and wrote tests that check every attack sound against its frame. After the fix the hits landed within 0.2 frames, and on the final build they still do. Ask for a test with every fix, so the next change cannot quietly break it.

7. 7Build for the web and ship it on itch.io

   A browser game is the shortest path to something people can play. Ask the agent for a build script: Grave Night's tools/build_web.py ships only the sprite atlases the game uses and converts the sounds to MP3. A later session split the loading by night, the title first and then only what night 1 needs, so on a simulated phone connection the title screen appeared after 3.6 seconds instead of a 69.9-second wait. On itch.io, choose HTML as the kind of project and upload a ZIP with index.html in it; itch.io's HTML5 guide lists the current limits on file count and size, so check the build against them. itch.io also asks you to tag projects that contain generative AI and to say so in the description. Grave Night is free at ludoaigames.itch.io/grave-night.