How to make games in Claude Code: from install to a game you can play

Claude Code can already make a game from an empty folder. Ask for a platformer and it will write a player script, a level scene and an input map. What it cannot do on its own is press Play. So the usual first evening goes like this: Claude writes, you run the game, the player falls through the floor, you copy the error into the terminal, Claude fixes it, and you run it again. You become the part of the loop that can see.

Flockbay takes that job back. It is a free AI game maker built on Godot: a desktop app with the official Godot 4.7.2 inside, not a fork, where your game is a real Godot 4 project you can open, read and change, and the builder lives inside the Godot editor. It hands Claude Code the tools to work on the running game, over MCP, the protocol Claude Code already uses for tools. Claude plays the game, reads what broke, looks at it, and fixes it before it tells you it is done.

This page walks the whole way, from install to a game you can play, then covers the problems people hit. For the other ways to use Claude with Godot, without Flockbay, and how they compare, read Claude for Godot.

Since Flockbay 2.0 there are two ways to do it. Claude Code can run inside Flockbay: pick Claude in the model menu, and Flockbay runs it on your Claude plan behind its own chat, with the tools already connected and nothing to paste; the docs page Build with your Claude plan, linked below, covers that way. Or Claude Code stays in your own terminal and connects over MCP, which is what the steps below walk through.

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A 64-bit Windows PC on an Intel or AMD processor; we test on Windows 11. The Flockbay app is on Windows today, and the Mac release comes later.

Claude Code, on a paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise) or an Anthropic Console account billed per use. The free claude.ai plan does not include Claude Code. On Windows, install it from PowerShell with irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex, or with winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode.

An internet connection, because building comes over the network. A free Flockbay account, which the app asks for the first time you send it something. You do not need Godot installed: the app brings its own.

Download Flockbay from flockbay.com and run the installer. It installs for your user account, so it needs no administrator, and it sets up Microsoft's WebView2 if your PC lacks it.

Open the app and type the game you want in one sentence, such as "a small 3D island where you collect shells before the tide comes in". Sign in when it asks. The app reads the sentence, shows what it understood on one card, 2D or 3D and where the game will be saved, and you press Continue.

The world builds and opens in the Godot editor, inside the app: the chat on the left, your world in the 3D or 2D view with the builder's buttons around it, and the Game screen one tab away. Leave it open. Claude Code works on the game the app has open.

Open Connectors from the Flockbay menu and press Set up on the Another agent (MCP) row. Press Turn on, pick Claude Code and press Copy. The account menu's MCP connection item opens the same dialog.

Press Install skills and hooks while you are there. It puts Flockbay's instructions for your agent into Claude Code, and hooks: one checks that a script Claude edits still parses, another asks Claude to play the game before it says a change works.

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The Flockbay app writes this for you with the real paths filled in: open the account menu, choose MCP connection, press Turn on, pick Claude Code and press Copy. The three paths are specific to your machine and stay the same from one sitting to the next, so you paste it once. Below is the shape, with the paths as placeholders.

Paste it into PowerShell or Command Prompt and press Enter. It registers one MCP server, flockbay-stage, with --scope user, so Claude Code finds it from any folder, not only the one you pasted in. The connection stays on until you turn it off, and the app opens it again for whichever game you open next, so you paste it once.

When you press Turn on, the app runs the same line itself. If it could not start on your machine, the dialog says so in red, with the reason.

Open a terminal in your game's folder. The card in step 1 showed where it is saved, usually Documents\Flockbay and the game's name. Type claude.

Type /mcp. You should see flockbay-stage, connected. Starting in the game's folder is not required for the tools, but it lets Claude read the project's files directly too, which helps when it is tracing a bug.

Make the first prompt a question: "Look at this game and tell me what is in it: the main scene, the player, the controls, and what happens when I press Play." Claude reads the project, checks the editor and the running game, and answers. If the summary is wrong, fix that before anything else.

Then ask for one change with a way to check it: "Add a double jump. The second jump should be a little lower than the first. Play the game, jump twice, and tell me how high each jump went." A change with a number to check is a change Claude can test. "Make it better" is not.

Keep to one mechanic per prompt. The people who make a game this way ask for the jump, play it, then ask for the coins. The people who paste a forty-line design into the first message get a lot of plausible code and nothing that plays.

It edits through the open Godot editor. Adding a node, changing a property, writing a script, connecting a signal: each change is one step in Godot's own undo history, named for what it did, and the scene is saved after it. Press Ctrl+Z in the editor and the change is gone, the same as one of yours.

It checks before it plays. A script it writes comes back with Godot's own GDScript parse error and line if there is one, and it can do a headless run for a few seconds of game time to see it start and read stdout.

It runs the game and reads the errors. Playing starts the game in the Game screen, as your Play does, and reports stdout and every error and warning with its file, line and call stack.

It playtests. It injects timed input events (keys, mouse motion, InputMap actions) into the running game, reads values off the live scene tree, such as how high the player went, and captures the game viewport as the player sees it, or the editor's viewport. Your real mouse and keyboard are never touched, and the moment you press something yourself its input stops and the game is yours.

It builds the world with whole systems rather than code: terrain, water, sky, weather, the player controller, and props, six families in a 3D world and four in a 2D one. It can also search Flockbay's library of ready-made models, textures and sounds and bring one in, and generate a 3D model, picture or sound on your own Tripo or ElevenLabs key if you have added one in Connectors.

Every step shows in the app, in a chat named Your agent, so you can see what it did without reading the terminal.

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Press Play on the Game screen, or F5 anywhere in the editor; F8 stops. The game runs on the bundled Godot, on your machine, with nothing streamed.

Claude can tell you the second jump reached 2.6 metres. It cannot tell you the jump feels floaty or that the level is dull. That part is yours, and it is the part that decides whether the game is good. Flockbay never starts the game under you while you are using the builder: if you have touched the builder since Claude last played, it is told to wait and you get Play instead.

Say what was wrong in terms of what you saw and felt: "The second jump is too high and the fall is slow. Make the fall faster than the rise, then play it and tell me the air time." Claude changes it, plays it and reports numbers. You play again.

Do the parts that are faster by hand by hand. Sculpting a hill, painting a path or dropping twenty rocks is quicker with the builder's buttons than in a sentence, and Claude sees the result on its next look. Commit to git between sessions; the editor's undo covers a step, version control covers an afternoon.

Connected to Flockbay, Claude Code closes the agent loop on the running game, not only on the code. It validates every GDScript file without running it, starts a Play or a headless run, injects a timed sequence of input events (keys, mouse, InputMap actions, up to 200 steps), captures the game viewport, and reads the live scene tree, stdout and the debugger's errors with file, line and stack. Then it changes the code and plays again. Flockbay's own AI runs that check, play, read, fix loop by itself; your own agent gets the same tool calls over MCP, free.

What it does not do: play a whole game through to a goal, return a pass or fail verdict, keep a regression suite, record video, file bug reports, run parallel instances, or judge balance and feel. Human playtesters still decide whether the game is fun.

The line on Windows. Paste it into PowerShell or Command Prompt as it is; both pass it through unchanged, and the quotes are there because the paths contain spaces. Run claude mcp get flockbay-stage: it should say Connected. If it says Failed to connect, go back to the dialog. If the app could not start the line, the dialog says why in red. If you reinstalled Flockbay since you pasted it, copy the line again.

The server is missing in one folder. An older line registered the server for the folder you pasted it in. Run claude mcp remove flockbay-stage, then paste the current line, which carries --scope user.

Only one Flockbay tool appears. The app is not serving Claude yet. Open the Flockbay app, open your game, and check that Another agent is on in Connectors. The tools then appear in the same session by themselves. If they do not, start a new Claude Code session.

Permissions. Claude Code asks before it calls a tool from a new MCP server. Answer yes as it goes, or open /permissions and add an allow rule for mcp__flockbay-stage, which covers every tool on that server.

The editor is not open. The tools that change scenes and scripts work through the Godot editor inside the Flockbay app, so the game has to be open there. Open it from the app's home screen. The tools that play the game need it running; Claude starts it itself.

Claude is told to wait. If you have used the builder since Claude last played, the app offers you Play instead of starting the game under you. If Flockbay's own AI is working in the same game, Claude is told so and waits for it to finish.

A change you cannot see. If Claude reports a change and the running game looks the same, the game has not reloaded it. Stop it and press Play again.

It cannot tell you whether the game is fun. Pictures and numbers show what happened, not how it felt.

It works on the game Flockbay has open. That can be a Godot project you already have: Flockbay asks once before it adds anything to it, and Claude works with the Godot tools there until you let a world tool in. If you want Claude in your own Godot editor instead, Claude for Godot compares the servers for that.

It needs Windows today, and an internet connection while you build; playing what you built does not. New code is GDScript, or C# when the game already uses it. Flockbay is closed source; the engine is Godot and the project is yours.

Connecting Claude Code to Flockbay is free. You pay Anthropic for Claude, on the plan you already have: Pro is $20 a month, or $17 billed yearly, and Max starts at $100 a month, as of 29 Sep 2026. Flockbay charges nothing for the connection, and the builder is free. What is free in each AI game maker compares the other routes.

Generated art is optional. Without keys, Claude builds from Flockbay's library or with Godot's own shapes. With your own Tripo or ElevenLabs key, it generates on that key and you pay that provider.

If you would rather not keep a terminal open, Claude Code runs inside Flockbay on the same Claude plan: pick Claude in the model menu. The other free ways are a ChatGPT sign-in on Plus or higher or your own API key. Flockbay also has optional plans that run the AI for you. What Flockbay costs has the detail.

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