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Simon Willison releases Battle Drones, a browser RTS built mainly with AI coding tools

2 articles2 sourcessince Oct 20Last article 1h ago ·

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Simon Willison releases Battle Drones, a Command & Conquer style real-time strategy game that runs in a web browser on mobile and desktop.

He says Claude Code did most of the building over twelve major iterations and 321 commits, and his X post names Claude Opus 5.5 as the main model used.

The game offers several play modes and six maps. Two-device multiplayer works by sending game state between nearby devices as audio messages, according to his post dated October 20, 2026.

Written by AI from the articles below · updated Oct 20, 3:55 PM ET

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Latest developmentOct 20, 3:43 PM ET
Simon Willison builds Battle Drones, a browser RTS with audio multiplayer

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The articles in this story. Times are ET.

Oct 20
  1. Simon WillisonX
    Simon Willison builds Battle Drones, a browser RTS with audio multiplayer

    AISimon Willison says he built Battle Drones, a Command & Conquer style real-time strategy game that runs in the browser. He mainly used Claude Opus 5.5 for the work, and the game supports device-to-device multiplayer over an audio link.

    Screenshot of a 3D isometric real-time strategy game in progress. HUD at top reads "1:49", "4×", "Ironclad · Industry" (blue dot), "Boom · Industry" (red dot), resource icons and "0:56", with a blue-versus-red balance bar labeled "B" and "R". A banner in the center top reads "DOUBLE KILL" with "Blue" beneath it. The grassy battlefield shows a blue team base in the lower left with a domed command center, a radar dish, two factory buildings and a turret, plus a refinery labeled "+200" where blue supply trucks carrying crates gather around ore deposits, with floating "+45" labels by the trucks. A gravel road runs diagonally from the base to the upper right, where blue tanks fire a laser at a white enemy unit. Near the base, red enemy tanks under fire show a "+45" label, while blue turrets shoot at them. Rocky outcrops sit at the top left and right center, clusters of low-poly trees line the right and bottom edges, and a minimap is in the top right corner. Pause and mute buttons are at the
  2. Simon WillisonBlog
    Simon Willison releases Battle Drones, a vibe coded RTS with audio-based multiplayer

    AISimon Willison announces Battle Drones, a browser-based Command & Conquer style real-time strategy game built mainly by Claude Code over twelve major iterations and 321 commits. The game runs on mobile and desktop, offers several play modes and six maps, and supports two-device multiplayer by synchronizing game state through audio messages between nearby devices. The post also describes how the project was built and what he learned along the way.

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