Yuji Horii says he used Anthropic’s Claude to create and release a playable, text-based browser game in about 30 minutes, using only a prompt. That’s a sharp contrast with his earlier mystery game, The Portopia Serial Murder Case. Back then, making a game meant writing the story, drawing the art, and programming the code himself, a process that could take months or even years.
First released in 1983, The Portopia Serial Murder Case puts players in an interrogation room. They ask questions and present evidence to catch a subject in lies and corner him before time runs out or he shuts down. Horii’s new game is fairly short, and crime enthusiasts would likely enjoy it. Humans could easily have made it too, so it shows AI-assisted prototyping rather than proof that AI is needed for this kind of game.
Horii has praised AI, saying it can significantly cut development time and improve efficiency. His comments drew some backlash. With a natural-language prompt, he skipped the drawing and programming steps he described from his earlier work.
Game companies are pushing to use AI to improve efficiency, which has become a major concern across the industry and has been linked to hundreds of layoffs. Square Enix has been particularly open about expanding its AI use, including plans to hand most quality-assurance and troubleshooting tasks to AI. The company has also tested AI technology on text-based adventure games, including Horii’s The Portopia Serial Murder Case.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said developers had been asked to “retool for maximum AI acceleration” so they could produce “more and better stuff.” The directive came after the company announced a delay to its Star Wars and Marvel crossover game. EA has also strongly encouraged AI use to boost productivity while saving money.
The debate carries particular weight for Dragon Quest, a popular series with many hardcore fans. The source article argues that fans fell in love with the early games for the creativity and imagination of their fantasy worlds, brought to life by human creators such as Horii and Akira Toriyama, who handled character design. Horii’s short interrogation game makes AI’s lower barrier to prototyping easy to see. Whether fans will value games developed entirely by AI in the same way is a different question.
