Kajkage Escape

The game

A Kajkage, the green marzipan cake from Danish birthday parties, has run away from the test department. It knows what happens to cakes that pass testing.

A countdown from three starts the round. Then you press one button to jump. Press it again in mid-air for a double jump. The office floor is full of bug reports, office chairs, stacks of test plans and loose network cables.

The route runs through the systems a test team lives with: KY, FAGSYSTEM, SELVBETJENING, BATCH, TESTCONTROLLER, DEPLOY, TESTDATA and KOMBIT. A sign hangs from the ceiling each time you enter a new one.

Nine testers follow close behind, each with their initials on their shirt, shouting things every tester has heard: "Works on my machine!", "Where are the acceptance criteria?", "Priority: Blocker!". Each time you hit something, they catch up. A bar at the top shows how close they are. Coffee cups float in the air and buy you a head start.

Every 100 metres, one tester gives up with a reason. SAGH has a stand-up. FBIN is stuck in a Teams meeting. The last one closes the ticket as "Cannot reproduce". Shake off all nine and the Kajkage is free.

Stages

1. IdeaFour ideas with a Kajkage. The chase won.
2. BuildRunner, testers, obstacles and coffee in one HTML file.
3. LookEnglish text, Netcompany colours and a calmer background.
4. DetailsNamed testers, system zones, a countdown and a wilder Kajkage.
5. SoundSound effects made in code, with a mute button.
6. PlaytestFirst rounds, to find what feels wrong.

How I made it

The only requirement I started with was that the game had to include a Kajkage. Claude suggested four ideas, and I picked the chase. The first version had the cake running from a birthday party. I changed it to ten testers, because that is the world I work in every day.

The code is written by Claude, Anthropic's AI model. I own the idea and the decisions. I describe what should change and why, and Claude turns that into code.

• One button on purpose. A small game with one clear action is something I can finish, test and share within a few weeks.
• The first version was busy to look at. Windows with a city view, a patterned carpet and bright desks competed with the things you actually need to see. The background is now flat and muted, so only the cake, the testers and the obstacles stand out.
• The colours come from the Netcompany palette: a dark petrol for the floor and text, and a red-orange for anything that can hurt you.
• The game was first written in Danish, then moved to English so more people can play it.
• The testers are named after real colleagues. I had nine names, so the game has nine testers. I did not want to invent a tenth.
• The first Kajkage looked too polite for a cake on the run. It now has wild eyes, an open mouth and its tongue flapping in the wind.
• All sound is generated in code: beeps for the countdown, a boing for each jump, a thud when you crash. There are no sound files. A button and the M key turn it off, because not everyone plays with sound at work.

Next step

Play three rounds on a phone and three on a computer, and write down the three things that annoy me most. Fix exactly those before anyone else plays it.