Craig Stevenson

Senior Game Designer / Producer

Roblox Survival Prototype

Generative AI Project: Playable Roblox Prototype in One Week

 

This is a survival experience built in Roblox Studio to test a simple question: how fast could I get a playable prototype running on a platform I had never used? The prototype took about a week of work, and Claude Code had something running within a few hours.

It features a dynamically generated map built from biome tiles (forest, desert, mountain, cave, lakes and rivers), health, hunger, thirst, and temperature systems, early crafting and shelter building, dynamic weather including lightning strikes and tornadoes, and animals that can be harvested for food. Structures are owned by players, with an alliance and rival system planned for future multiplayer conflict.

My role
Game design and production. Claude Code, connected to Roblox Studio through MCP, handled the engineering.
Tools
Roblox Studio, Claude Code (via MCP), and art assets sourced from the Creator Store.
Platform
Roblox
Status
Playable prototype, not published

View examples from the project memory and skills (PDF)

How I Used AI

  • Engineering: Claude Code wrote the scripts and tooling inside Roblox Studio, including the map generation, survival meters, crafting, weather, and animal systems, based on my design direction.
  • Production: I scoped the prototype to the systems that would prove the idea fastest and sequenced the work so each system was playable before the next was added.
  • Art: I used Creator Store assets as placeholder art, since the goal was to test systems and speed, not visual polish.

What I Learned

  • Speed to first playable is the headline. I had never opened Roblox Studio before, and Claude Code had a running prototype within a few hours. That changes how cheaply a designer can test an idea on an unfamiliar platform.
  • Design direction still decides the outcome. The AI built what I described, so the quality of the prototype came down to how clearly I scoped the systems and how well they fit together.
  • Prototype, not product. The result is a testbed for survival ideas, and the placeholder art shows it.

Screens

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