← Grauwacht

How Grauwacht is made

I have been playing games for 30 years. Grauwacht is the game I want to play myself – a dark keep-builder with guilds, raids and an arena, for a few minutes at a time, spread over the day. AI is the tool that lets one person build it. Here is what it does and what it does not.

AI and me

Made with AI
  • Painted art, following a fixed style guide
  • The code, written together with an AI assistant (Claude)
  • Some 3D beasts (Meshy) and short video clips
  • Story drafts and translations
  • The town and figures in Blender, from free models (Poly Haven, CC0) – the scripts written with Claude
Made by me
  • Game idea, rules and balancing – every decision, tested in the real game
  • What gets built – and what does not (no loot boxes)
  • Editing the story, every decision in the game

We play it ourselves

We play Grauwacht as two normal players – no developer account, no free crystals, no shortcuts. That is how we find what nobody notices at a desk: a companion bar that only showed one run instead of the whole trip, or a building card that showed different numbers than the header. Both were fixed the same day.

In numbers, as of 21 October 2026

48days since 3 September
1,816work steps (commits)
101,000lines of game code
210automatic tests
60beasts
5languages

What it costs

Real money so far, not counting my time.

WhatCost
Claude (AI assistant for the code)$100 / month
Meshy (3D models)€10 first month, then €20 / month
Rented graphics card for Blender (RunPod)$7.81 in total
grauwacht.com€10 / year
Google Play developer account$25 once
ChatGPT images, Higgsfield clips, servers (Firebase), Blender, Poly Havenfree so far
Play free More about the game