Roxy | The Squirrel Influencer

Inspiration

Cozy management sims like Animal Crossing got us thinking about how satisfying a simple gather-and-tend loop can be on a small screen, and we kept coming back to the idea that being a social media influencer already plays like a game: chase a deadline, post something good, collaborate on videos with other creators, pursue sponsored video opportunities, and watch your numbers go up. ROXY combines both ideas into one prototype - a squirrel who forages in a park and tends a den, then turns that effort into video content for an audience that is always watching the clock.

What it does

ROXY moves between two connected scenes: an outdoor park and an indoor den, controlled with a single virtual joystick. In the park, the player records vlogs, gathers materials and runs into wandering characters who react with their own animations and dialogue. Back in the den, those materials are cooked into meals that keep the squirrel's Fed meter healthy, and crafted into outfits that can be shared online. Recorded park footage gets edited into a video and posted from the computer room, on a countdown that shrinks with each round. Post in time, and Views, Likes, and Followers grow, pushing the player up a 27-tier Rank ladder; miss the deadline, and a chunk of those Followers unfollow. Roxy also crafts adorable creations (hats, scarves, etc.) and shows them off in her videos. The most fun, however, comes from making collab videos with local celebrities and creating branded content for local forest entrepreneurs.

How we built it

The assets were made with Google Flow and processed with Photoshop. When it came to putting everything together, Claude Code did everything. The entire game was programmed with Claude, with not a single line of code written manually. Truthfully, we didn't even look at the code until the very end of the process. According to Claude, the whole game is vanilla JavaScript, HTML, and CSS - the map, avatar, and every UI screen are plain DOM elements panned with a CSS transform. All audio effects are generated at runtime with ZzFX, a tiny procedural sound synth. Every asset ships locally, and nothing is ever fetched from a CDN or font service, so the build runs fully offline.

Challenges we ran into

Creating a vlogging mechanic that is actually engaging was the biggest challenge. We tried to make it more fun by giving our game characters quirky personalities. Another challenge was keeping the game under 35 MB, as required by the competition rules. We had so much fun with this project that we just kept adding more and more. At some point, we had to go back and compress the image assets to make everything fit.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of creating an engaging progression system that is true to the influencer premise. Making videos leads to an accumulation of followers. Once you reach a certain number of followers, you become eligible to create collab videos with other creators, such as Bear the Rock Star or Llama the Movie Star. Once you reach another follower milestone, you get asked to make branded videos by local forest entrepreneurs such as Mouse the Florist, Frog the Painter, or Owl the Writer. These branded deals result in rewards such as flower decorations for your home, custom portraits, or books. Roxy's den transforms before your eyes from a very bare dwelling into a beautiful and warm home.

What we learned

The biggest lesson - we learned that it IS possible to vibe-code an entertaining game that actually matches our vision. It's also possible to work with AI in a way that makes the process of game development satisfying and genuinely fun.

What's next for Roxy

More characters. More branded video opportunities. More collab video opportunities. More maps. More stories. More den upgrades. The current state of the game teases a possible larger world, and we aspire to make that happen in the future.