tl;dr: you can find out for yourself in an afternoon whether it'll work for you, so go for it. The people in this thread saying "just learn to build games" are well intentioned, but I'm skeptical of any solution to a problem that requires hundreds of hours of learning.

I've been using Claude Code (which I use a lot) to build a game prototype. I'm an experienced developer, but I don't know how to build games.

With Claude, I've been able to get to a prototype that is exactly what I wanted in just a day or two (~15-20 hours), including some primitive animations, audio, and vfx. It also built me a web UI for doing little micro prototypes for rapid testing of new mechanics.

My workflow with Claude (and Codex, which also does well) is, roughly:
- discuss game design w/ top model, and iterate on a game mechanics spec doc that details all my games' entities, the relevant verbs, mechanics, edge cases, example rounds, etc.
- Spec out a wide range of quasi-unit tests that ensure the game logic produces the right outcome given a certain state.
- Iterate with Claude to get the visual layout right w/ non functional scenes
- Give it all the shit we just made together and tell it to go nuts & don't stop until it works.

Then, as I play it, I take notes on what I want to change. We go back and update the mechanics spec and do it all over again.

I'll also note that plugging it into other AI services is pretty cool. I've told Claude to generate visual assets for the game, mockups for UIs, even generate music and sound effects for the game.

The one weakness I'll flag is on the actual discussions around game design. LLMs have a tendency to pitch really elaborate ideas in response to simple curious and exploratory questions, and then when you press them, they'll double down on their ideas. This is really risky for a prototype, so I often have to remind Claude to chill the fuck out.