What happens when you give a dog a keyboard and a Claude Max subscription? Quasar Saz apparently.
This is a game vibe coded by Momo, a 2 year old cavapoo, and kept on rails with tools developed by her human Caleb.
Quasar Saz is a cosmic musical arcade game about an alien named Zara who fights corrupted sound with a stringed instrument called a saz.
If you want the best most playable version, then grab the version with some human added bug fixes and usability enhancements. If you want the exact version Momo made with 0 human intervention, and don't mind some bugs, then grab Momo's unmodified game
My dog typed on a keyboard. Claude Code read her keystrokes and decided what they meant. Every mashed key, every chaotic string of characters was treated as a cryptic but intentional game design directive. The AI was instructed to never dismiss any input as gibberish. Every character had to mean something.
The result is a complete, playable game that no human designed.
Momo's initial design for this game was:
wsaqq4e3wd232`21sazqa
Which of course means:
The game is QUASAR SAZ — you play as ZARA, a quirky rebel alien musician wielding a legendary cosmic saz, trapped in the Sound Dimension where music IS reality. Strum your saz to fire sound waves, ride amplitude pulses, collect lost melodies across 4 synesthetic worlds.
| Keys | Meaning |
|---|---|
| w-s-a | WASD cluster = free movement, wandering, adventure |
| Quick-quick = urgency, double-tap mechanic | |
| 4-e-3 | 4 worlds, energy system, 3 abilities |
| w-d | Waves + Dimension = sound dimension setting |
| 2-3-2 | Oscillating rhythm pattern (wave/pulse mechanic) |
| ` | Hidden secrets (the console key = secret areas) |
| 2-1 | 2nd chance revival, 1 hero |
| s-a-z | SAZ - the Turkish cosmic string instrument! |
| q-a | Quasar + Amplitude = cosmic sound waves |
The pipeline has three parts:
1. The Designer (my dog)
She learned to swipe her paw across the keyboard. The output looks like skfjhsd#$% or mmmmmmqqqqq.
To her, it's a rewarding activity she loves to do. To the AI (Claude Code), it's a design document.
2. The Interpreter (a system prompt) A carefully crafted prompt tells Claude Code to treat every piece of chaotic input as a meaningful game design instruction. Letter repetition might mean "more of something." Harsh characters might mean "danger." The overall rhythm and texture of the input shapes the creative direction. The AI is told: "You MUST make use of EVERY letter I give you. No hand waving."
3. The Developer (Claude Code + guardrails) Claude Code writes all the code, draws all the graphics procedurally, synthesizes all the audio from sine waves, and tests everything. A suite of custom tools ensures the output actually works:
- A DevTools runtime that can screenshot the running game, simulate input, and validate assets
- A full test suite (48+ unit tests) that must pass before any change ships
- Shader and scene linters that catch broken references
- Input sequence files that automate gameplay verification
The dog provides creative direction. The AI provides execution. The guardrails ensure nothing (or at least not much) breaks.
Through several rounds of dog-typing, a game materialized:
Quasar Saz is a wave-based arcade shooter set in a cosmic sound dimension. You play as Zara, a teal alien rebel musician, fighting through 6 waves of corrupted sound enemies with an evolving musical weapon (a saz). The game culminates in a boss fight against the Dissonance King.
Everything is procedurally generated. There are no sprite sheets, no audio files, no imported art assets. Every character is drawn with code. Every sound is synthesized from sine waves and noise. The background is a GPU shader simulating a living nebula with aurora waves and twinkling stars.
Key features that emerged from Momo's input:
- A weapon that evolves across three forms (gold, green, purple) with different attack patterns
- Chain reaction mechanics where high combos trigger cascading lightning kills
- A phase-shifting ghost enemy that teleports between visible and invisible states
- A three-phase boss fight with escalating attack patterns and minion summoning
- A full procedural soundtrack in pentatonic A minor
- A blink-dash with afterimage effects
None of this was planned. It was divined from Momo's keystrokes.
| Component | Technology |
|---|---|
| Engine | Godot 4.6 (Mono) |
| Gameplay Code | C# (.NET 8.0) |
| Graphics | Procedural _Draw() calls, GLSL shaders |
| Audio | Real-time waveform synthesis (no audio files) |
| Physics | Jolt Physics |
| Rendering | Forward Plus, D3D12 |
| Testing | GdUnit4 (48+ tests across two runners) |
| AI | Claude Code (Anthropic) |
| Designer | One (1) dog |
res://
scripts/ C# gameplay (player, enemies, bosses, projectiles)
game/ AutoLoads (EventBus, SoundManager, DevTools, GameManager)
ui/ HUD (all procedurally drawn)
levels/ Main gameplay scene
shaders/ Cosmic background shader
test/ Unit tests and input sequences
tools/ Linting, validation, and automation scripts
- tea-leaves - The base Godot project with all the tools and guardrails for making a game with Claude Code (same foundation as this project, just without the dog-designed game)
- DogKeyboard - All the routing and miscellaneous tasks for reading input from Momo, dispensing treats, and playing chimes for her
MIT. See LICENSE.
Quasar Saz was designed by a dog, interpreted by Claude Code, and facilitated by Caleb Leak. No dogs were harmed, though several keyboards were.
