GTA for India: a 3D Mumbai driving game built with Claude

Day 4 of the challenge came with a simple rule. One spin, one hour, no rerolls. The spinner landed on "GTA for India", so that's what got built.

The reel shows the result. This page covers what's in it and how the build went.

What the game is

It's a 3D Mumbai driving game that runs in the browser. You drive an auto through traffic, potholes, crowds and smog you can actually see.

The jokes are built into the mechanics. In the original, your wanted level goes up when you cause trouble. Here, your wanted level is Mummy's missed calls. Every time you crash, Mummy calls. Five calls and the screen says GHAR AA JAO.

A few other pieces from the reel. A cow blocks the road and only moves after three honks. You can steal a taxi, and the driver shouts at you in Marathi. Speed breakers, police checkpoints and challans are all in the way.

None of that is subtle, and it isn't meant to be. Each idea is a small rule attached to something everyone in Mumbai already recognises.

How it got built

I typed the prompt. Claude, the AI that writes my code, built the game from it.

The timing was the real constraint. GTA 6 comes out next month, and Rockstar took years on it. I got sixty minutes. That gap is the joke, but it also shaped the scope. With a fixed hour and no rerolls, you can't keep restarting until the first draft looks perfect. You take what comes back and keep pushing on it.

One hour wasn't enough, so I didn't stop. The game in the reel is what exists after going past the timer, not what existed at minute sixty.

What to take from it

The useful part isn't the cow. It's how the scope was chosen. A strong, specific theme gives a model a lot to work with. "Indian roads are already GTA" is one sentence, and it implies traffic, chaos, rules that nobody follows and a lot of honking. Each of those became a feature.

A vague prompt like "make a driving game" leaves every decision open. A prompt with a point of view settles most of them before the first line is written.

The other lesson is about the clock. A hard limit with no rerolls pushes you to ship something playable early, then keep adding to it. Poking at a working game is easier than polishing a plan.

Try it

Pick a theme you already know well and give yourself a fixed block of time. Describe the world in a sentence, let Claude build a first version, then add rules one at a time, like the three-honk cow.

If you want the game, comment GTA on the reel and I'll send you the link. I'm also deciding what level 2 should be, so tell me which city it should be: Mumbai, Delhi or Bangalore.