The Night Shift: How I Recruited an Army of LLMs to Code My Game

There is a specific brand of nostalgia reserved for the dial-up era.

When I was ten years old, I was utterly obsessed with an old DOS-based strategy game. The premise was beautifully simple, almost elegant: make money, build an army, and overthrow a kingdom. It was actually one of the earliest ancestors of online gaming, and I played it religiously; right up until my parents saw the astronomical long-distance phone charges and swiftly pulled the plug.

Thirty years later, that unfinished business is still rattling around in my head. But I don't just want to clone it; I want to evolve it.

The goal for my project, Crown, is to take that core loop of gold and conquest and inject it with modern depth. I'm talking intricate character progression, sophisticated wealth-building mechanics, and a much more complex ladder to climb before you’re powerful enough to claim the throne.

The twist? I’m not building this kingdom alone. I’ve weaponized an entire ecosystem of AI agents to act as my development studio. Here is a look at the toolkit and the digital workforce I’m running in my home office.

The Digital Workbench: Engine & Infrastructure

To bring a 2.5D pixel-art world to life, you need a rock-solid foundation. For that, I’m relying on two industry staples:

• Unity 6: The visual engine where the game actually lives. It handles the frontend, everything the player sees, hears, and interacts with.
• SQL Server: The heavy-duty backend database. This is the invisible ledger managing the game’s entire economy, tracking everything from a player's gold balance to the exact stats of a rusted sword.
• GIMP: A powerful, open-source image editor I use to hand-craft and tweak the game’s visual assets and textures.

The Autonomous Workforce: Claude Code Agents

Instead of writing every line of C# code by hand, I'm acting as a product director for Claude Code, autonomous AI agents running via Claude Pro that can plan, execute, and test their own work.

• The Frontend Agent: This is my virtual software engineer. It takes my high-level design ideas, maps out the execution plan, and writes the C# scripts inside Unity. It’s the agent responsible for building the tactile, grid-based inventory systems from scratch.
• The Backend Agent: My dedicated database administrator. It writes and applies the complex SQL migrations to ensure our tables, like merchant profiles and item metadata, talk to each other seamlessly.
• The Upcoming Roster: Soon, I’ll be onboarding a QA Agent to automatically hunt for bugs, alongside a Mission & Dialogue Builder. The dream for the Mission Builder? Activating it right before I hit the pillow, letting an AI agent construct narrative arcs, rewards, and XP systems while I sleep.

The Factory Line: Gemini Custom Gems

While Claude handles the heavy logic, I use Gemini Pro and its custom "Gems" (specialized, pre-prompted AI personalities) as my creative assembly line. When you're building an expansive RPG, consistency is everything.

• The Item Builder Gem: This agent operates under strict parameters to forge game items. Whether it’s balancing the health-to-weight ratio of a potion or scaling weapon damage, this Gem ensures that every piece of loot feels like it belongs in the same universe.
• The Next Phase: I’m currently architecting two more specialized Gems. A Scene Builder to ensure our game maps maintain a unified aesthetic, and an NPC Builder to systematically generate distinct, flavor-rich characters to inhabit the world.