AI tools used (or “None”)
Tools, and what each did - Claude Code (Claude Fable 5.1) wrote most of the C#: the stalker behaviour, the day-night clock, the trail system that lays tracks from the fence to every camp, the compass and item bar drawn in code, the scavenging and weapons. It also placed the 37 sites across the map with editor scripts, cleared trees around them, and did the builds. When the browser build went blank an hour before the deadline, it ran the build in a headless browser, read the WebGL console, found a shadow-sampler error and fixed it. - Tripo for 3D models: the cabin and its two upgrades, the six survivors, the stalker, trees, rocks, the ruined shack, a buried pickup, a snowmobile, tents, crates, the lantern and bell. Prompts were short: "low poly snow-covered pine tree, single object". Claude imported them, built materials from the base colour maps, and scaled them into the world. - Mixamo for rigging and every animation clip: walks, runs, the flying-back death, the injured limp, the stand-up in the intro, the rifle set. - ElevenLabs for the intro voice-over, five lines, re-recorded twice as the story changed. - Unity's asset generation (GPT Image 1.5) for the twenty inventory icons, one prompt each, same style line in every prompt so they match. - Unity 6 with URP, a footstep recording from Epidemic Sound, everything else synthesized in the engine.

How I built it / process notes
The whole thing was built in a loop of me playing and Claude Code changing the game. I'd run the build, write down what felt wrong in plain words ("she stands up too quick and just stands there", "I'm barely running into anything out there", "the glow on the ammo is way too intense"), and Claude, running inside Unity through its MCP integration, would edit the scripts, move things in the scene, place props, rebuild and check the console. Then I'd play again. That loop ran roughly forty times over the three days. I never wrote a prompt longer than a couple of sentences; the prompts were playtest notes.

How does your game use the theme?
HOME is the house. Every loop of the game leaves it and comes back to it. The fence is the line the things outside won't cross, the front door is where a survivor stops being someone you're dragging through the dark and becomes part of the place, and the house itself grows as it fills with people: a porch lantern, then a bell, more rooms. The intro is her sitting in her own chair deciding to go out. The ending is everyone else sitting in it. The whole game is the distance between the fire in the woods and the fire at home.