Claude playtests and fixes Crossword Dungeon features

Jeff Schomay wanted an agent to experience his browser game rather than only reason about its code. Crossword Dungeon combines crossword answers with rooms, monsters and traps. Because it is text heavy and turn based, he had the agent create a Node.js wrapper that exposed the unchanged game logic through textual state snapshots and synthetic input events.

With that interface, Claude Code could read the current state, choose a move, send an HTTP request and inspect what happened next. Schomay then gave it a development milestone and required it to playtest each feature before proceeding. The published session covers five special encounters, including a thieving monster and a cage trap.

The cage example shows why interaction mattered. Existing automated tests passed, but after solving the room the player still could not move. Claude traced the problem to a cage flag that had not been cleared, edited the implementation and repeated the sequence until movement worked. The author reports completing the five encounters in that session. He still spent time manually playing afterward and found further bugs and feel issues, so this was a useful development feedback loop with continued human review.

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Source: Blog · Jeff Schomay