01Why we build with Claude
VITALE is not a collection of independent football mini-games. A player develops, competes for selection, earns minutes, accumulates fatigue, attracts transfer interest and negotiates a career inside a world that keeps moving. Every system affects the others.
Claude Code is the core tool that makes this interconnected project feasible for a bootstrapped, founder-led studio. We work with Claude across the process — from translating the founder's gameplay ideas into explicit rules, through designing C# architecture and writing implementation, to testing, debugging, documentation and review.
The principle behind the work
Claude is central to building the game. The developer is accountable for the game. Anatolii Ushakov defines the vision, judges trade-offs, reviews evidence and decides whether a feature is accepted or sent back for improvement.
02From an idea to gameplay design
Claude is not limited to explaining code that already exists. We use it to turn football and life-simulation ideas into systems with understandable choices, consequences and testable rules.
Coach & position decisions
What happens when a coach selects a midfielder on the wing? We specify actual match-position evidence, optional secondary-position learning, player requests and morale consequences. This design is undergoing implementation and reconciliation, not advertised as released gameplay.
Contracts & reputation
We design salary negotiations around the footballer's current ability, sporting form, market demand, reputation and club finances — then check whether the resulting economy remains credible over many seasons.
A football life, not only matches
Training, relationships, media, business decisions and a personal career are planned as connected parts of one RPG, with a distinction between implemented engine foundations and mechanics still being calibrated.
Mobile-first creative direction
Claude supports the information architecture and creative planning for a portrait-first mobile experience, with selected 3D events rather than an expensive open 3D world. Final UI presentation remains in development.
This process deliberately separates design intent from implemented and accepted behavior. A feature does not become a finished product simply because its specification is complete.
03What Claude builds with us
Core development takes place in a modular C# simulation repository. Claude Code helps create and evolve the engineering layers, working to explicit boundaries rather than generating disconnected features.
MatchEngine
Deterministic match simulation, match evidence and test fixtures. Given the same authoritative inputs and simulation rules, repeat runs can be compared reproducibly.
WorldEngine
A persistent football world with clubs, competitions, contracts and player lifecycle state. Simulation continuity, saved-game compatibility and replay consistency are major engineering requirements.
Player progression
Training, physical development, fatigue, recovery, form and injuries participate in an evolving career. The wider NPC population is simulated instead of frozen between hero appearances.
Market & economy
Transfer and loan decisions, club wage budgets, renewals and hero offers. Long-horizon pricing rules remain under calibration and are not considered release-ready solely because unit tests pass.
Data & tooling
Validated player and competition data, build scripts, structured test evidence and reproducible diagnostics for a simulation that must stay understandable as it grows.
Unity & Blender workflows
Claude contributes to client architecture, visual direction, character authoring workflows and technical-art tools. Final 3D and mobile presentation are separate workstreams still undergoing visual acceptance.
04Evidence from real engineering work
Our development records include source-controlled changes, tests, architecture reviews and reproducible calibration artifacts. These are engineering-stage findings, not claims of a shipped commercial game.
Example: NPC development in a persistent world
Claude-assisted work integrated player development with world-state persistence: NPC training and progression follow saved state rather than static source data. Acceptance included deterministic comparisons of uninterrupted and save/reload/resume simulations, legacy behavior checks, scoped reviews and release builds.
Example: ten-season market calibration
A synthetic 20-club stress test exposed a wage-budget defect that prevented contract renewals. A subsequent market-economy version corrected the initial budget problem, but a longer ten-season run found structural wage deflation and underpaid academy graduates. The change was deliberately blocked from integration pending a better pricing rule. That is the purpose of our QA process: catch systemic problems before building new features on top of them.
Example: visual quality gates
Character production uses topology checks, Blender renders, deformation evidence and separate visual review. A technically valid mesh that still looks like a mannequin is a failure, not an approved asset. The character pipeline is being refined; we do not present those prototypes as finished in-game characters.
Inspectable, not inflated. Internal branch history, design documents, deterministic test results and QA reports can be made available for an appropriate technical verification process. We do not invent customer numbers, funding, downloads or production readiness.
05Claude also contributes to the game's design
The design work is not an afterthought to code. Claude helps develop character direction, the emotional rhythm of a football career, interactive event structures, interface requirements, 3D asset specifications and technical production plans. We use these specifications to move from a gameplay idea toward something that can be implemented and verified.
The human developer remains the final creative authority. We revise or reject output when its anatomy, visual language, animation or player experience is not good enough. Current public pages intentionally avoid presenting illustrative concepts as screenshots of a playable game.
06How a change reaches acceptance
- Product decision
- Design & architecture
- Scoped implementation
- Automated tests
- Independent Claude review
- Founder acceptance
Claude sessions work from explicit boundaries: which systems may change, what must stay deterministic, which save versions must remain readable and which regressions are unacceptable. Reviewers inspect the actual diff and evidence rather than trusting the implementation's own status message.
Anatolii decides
- Gameplay goals and design priorities
- Economic and career-policy choices
- Visual direction and product taste
- Final acceptance, scope and release readiness
Claude develops with us
- Game-system proposals and architecture
- C# implementation and refactoring
- Test harnesses, deterministic comparisons
- Debugging, reviews and documentation
- Creative specifications and production tooling
07What's implemented — and what's still being built
VITALE is in active pre-release development. Its simulation foundations are substantial, with persistent player/world state and deterministic test infrastructure. These are engineering achievements, not proof of a finished iOS or Android build.
Market repricing, Life/Fanbase calibration, some career integration cases, the Unity client and production-quality 3D character art remain development or acceptance work. We do not claim a public release, store listing, user base, revenue or completed client where none exists.
08Why Claude matters as we grow
Pokekara Studio is bootstrapped and founder-led in Ukraine. Claude Code is an essential part of our daily creative and engineering capacity: decomposing work, implementing features, checking long-term behavior and helping a small operation maintain the discipline of a larger development team.
We currently use Claude in internal development, not as a production player-facing AI feature. Potential future Claude API use — for engineering diagnostics, content production, localization and quality assurance — remains exploratory rather than an already deployed integration.
Our goal is to turn this verified technical foundation into a commercially viable, original football career game for iOS and Android, without cutting corners on rights, simulation integrity or creative quality.