Mall Bats: a tycoon game about living in a dying mall's ceiling

The full story

Mall Bats is a free isometric tycoon and stealth game set in the drop ceiling of a fictional dying mall in autumn 2004. Players lay plywood, splice into the shops' power, send a crew out after closing to fish coins from the fountain while a guard patrols, and try to buy the mall at auction on New Year's Eve before a developer gets it.

The maker, who was inspired by the documentary Secret Mall Apartment, says a first attempt in March failed and a second, with Claude Opus 5.5, worked. Claude wrote nearly all the code: the simulation, crew AI, isometric renderer, a balance bot and an art pipeline. The art is generated through PixelLab from a style guide and tools the agent calls, with validation scripts that regenerate pieces that miss the spec. Claude also staged the trailer inside the running game and synthesised its music.

The source is public on GitHub, and the maker says the game was already playable after the first prompt, which the commit history shows.