Shards of Stone – A Warcraft 2-inspired RTS that runs in the browser

Name: Shards of Stone – A Warcraft 2-inspired RTS that runs in the browser
Availability: InStock
Author: AJSturrock

by AJSturrock·Mar 31, 2026·2 points·2 comments

Visit Project View on HN

AI Analysis

●●SolidCrowd PleaserShip It

Warcraft 2 clone built in 10 hours with Claude — impressive scope, crowded category.

Strengths

•ECS architecture with HTML5 Canvas delivers playable RTS in browser without installs
•AI-assisted development workflow with sub-agent teams is genuinely interesting methodology
•Cross-platform support including mobile with naval combat and tech trees

Weaknesses

•Browser RTS games already exist — nothing technically differentiated from competitors
•10-hour build time suggests limited polish depth for long-term gameplay

Post Description

A browser-based RTS inspired by Warcraft 2, Age of Empires & Starcraft. 9 factions, 200+ units, fog of war, tech trees, naval combat, multiplayer, and AI opponents. Runs on desktop and mobile with no install.

You can play it here: https://www.shardsofstone.com

I built this over ~10 hours of spare time using Claude as my primary development tool. I'm not a game dev - I described what I wanted in big brain dumps and iterated across multiple threads. Each thread made heavy use of plan mode and specifically asking for sub agent teams to build systems in parallel. I only hit the Claude max plan limits twice.

The whole engine is HTML5 Canvas + Next.js with an ECS architecture. Running on Vercel and using Cloudflare R2 for assets. Using Suno for music, Elevenlabs for dialog and Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview Image (Nano Banana) for image generation. Claude handled everything else. Also looking at Tauri to build desktop apps for Mac, Windows & Linux.

Some things I think are interesting:

1. LLM-powered AI commander that reads live game state and makes strategic decisions (bring your own API key, or play against the built-in scripted AI) - is pretty cheap to battle against Gemini Flash models / token efficient.

2. AI vs AI spectator mode - pit different LLM providers against each other - a new form of LLM arena? The game system interprets the LLM commands so may be somewhat limited and is a balance for the LLM to be able to take actions strategically without getting too granular.

3. Voice control - hold V and speak commands (requires API key added in settings).

4. Crash reports log to a database that Claude can read, debug and patch automatically (27 crashes patched out today after posting on Reddit).

Still WIP: campaign mode, unit animations, terrain art (currently borrowing WC2-style tilesets until I can find or create a solution to generate consistent high quality WANG tilesets), and balance/unique playstyles across all 9 factions.

Best way to try it: play a skirmish against the AI on a forest map with no water. The AI's naval game can get a little confused.