Mobile Game Prototype: Claude Design (Exploratory)

A hidden-object mobile game set in a living forest. Players pan and zoom across a layered woodland scene to find and collect camouflaged mushroom species — eight distinct types, each with its own rarity, silhouette, and preferred hiding spot. Collected finds slot into a woven basket inventory at the bottom of the screen.

Built in one sitting using Claude Design. Purely exploratory — no client, no brief, no deadline. Just a vibe and a well-planned prompt.

Process

Started with a rough concept — hidden-object mechanics, cozy forest setting, tactile inventory UI. Spent time thinking through the gameplay loop, mushroom species, interaction states, and art direction before writing anything. Then distilled it into one structured prompt.

The output: a multi-layered scene with swaying ferns, drifting leaves, a flowing stream, ambient insects, eight mushroom species with rarity tiers, tap-to-collect animations, and a woven SVG basket that pulses when a find slots in.

Time investment: a few hours, one sitting.
Iteration: one solid prompt after proper planning — the thinking happened before the prompt, not after.

What I learned

This was the first time I worked with something that Figma genuinely can’t do. I’ve spent years in static design — screens, components, handoffs. Seeing a prompt produce layered animation, environmental movement, and interactive feedback in one pass shifted something.

The skill isn’t just in prompting. It’s in knowing what you want clearly enough to ask for it well — which is still a design skill.