Here's how to build a Japanese canal boat game with Claude Opus 5.5, Unity 6 and Blender.
The trick is one system per prompt.
Never "Make a boat game".
The smart way to set it up:
Step 1 -> Create a Unity 6 URP project and connect Opus 5.5 through Unity's plugin and Blender MCP.
Step 2 -> Greybox the canal: water channel, stone walls, 2 bridges, docks.
Step 3 -> Boat physics: throttle, steering, wake trails, speed in knots on the HUD.
Step 4 -> Opus models the props in Blender: the covered boat, houses, the vermilion bridge, the pagoda, lanterns.
Step 5 -> Water shader, day/night cycle and rain, with lanterns that switch on at dusk.
Step 6 -> A compass on top and 9 landmarks that unlock on the map ("water gate, 3 of 9").
Step 7 -> Docking lessons: "come alongside the temple steps below 2 kn and press E".
Step 8 -> Opus playtests in play mode, reads the console and lists the bugs before fixing them.
Who does what:
> Blender: every model.
> Unity 6: the water, the light, the weather, the UI.
> Opus 5.5: boat physics, quests, scene setup, tests.
> You: steer it and say what feels off.
Test every feature at night in the rain. If it still looks good there, it will look good everywhere.
Someone with zero coding background shipped a game in 6 weeks with Claude Opus 5.5 and Godot, and the setup is worth copying line by line.
The rule underneath all of it: one feature at a time, tested in the game, before the next one exists.
Step 1 -> Opus 5.5 in Claude Code, opened inside the Godot project itself.
Step 2 -> Build one feature, play it, adjust until it feels right, only then start the next.
Step 3 -> Reference images in the game's style from Codex/Astra.
Step 4 -> Every image prompt that works gets saved as JSON and fed into the next generation, so the style never drifts.
Step 5 -> Big 3D assets in Tripo P2, built from those references.
Step 6 -> Small props modeled in Blender, textured in Tripo with the same refs, which is the cheap route.
Step 7 -> Animation in Cascadeur.
Step 8 -> Every VFX and shader documented in Obsidian so the look holds across six weeks.
Who does what:
> Opus 5.5: most of the code.
> Codex/Astra: references and assets.
> Tripo P2: the big 3D models.
> Godot: custom tools, headless scripts, the game itself.
One JSON file of good prompts is the reason every character, monster and prop looks like it belongs in the same world.
(Built by afterthewinddev, all credit there.)