XenoState
A traveler with an axe and round shield on his back looks down at a river mining village at golden hour, a beacon tower on the green mound behind it and a timber mine headframe at its edge Concept art · AI-generated, not in-game
XenoState · independent game studio

A studio built on one question.

Can people from outside the games industry make a polished game with AI and their own creativity?

We're finding out with our first game, Amara: a story-driven action RPG in Unreal Engine 5, built by a founder who isn't an engineer, directing a studio of Claude Code agents.

Meet AmaraHow we build it
Studio
XenoState
Founded
September 2026
Based in
United States
First game
Amara, in development
Engine
Unreal Engine 5
Team
1 founder + Claude Code agents
Funding
None, self-funded

Facts as of 8 October 2026.

The game

Amara

A third-person action RPG in the spirit of Dark Cloud. Ash, a traveler passing through, stops in Everly, a river mining town, and meets Amara, its kindest soul. Then the whole town is sealed away and scattered underground.

Ash goes down into the old mine to bring Everly's people back. Each person he frees returns as an orb that he carries home, and each orb rebuilds a home. The deeper he goes, the more the town lives again.

Descend→Free→Carry home→Rebuild↺
Rage is power…and it answers to feeling. You feel Ash's power build, held back, or let loose.
Hard, fair, readable fightsYou can always see why you got hit, and win next time by playing better.
Every piece means somethingEvery piece you bring home means something to someone.
Every moment means somethingMoments you'd remember, saying something without explaining it.
Story spoilers: tap to reveal

Ash chose his own name: it is what's left after a fire. He burned his old self down, and the game slowly shows who that old self was.

Concept art of Ash: a broad-shouldered man in a green wool tunic and leather jerkin with a bearded axe and round wooden shield, in a lantern-lit mine tunnelConcept art
Ash. Grounded-stylized: real light and materials, with heroic, simplified shapes. Concept art made with AI, not a game asset.

In the engine today

In-engine: Ash on a timber-railed ramp in the Spiral Stope, a narrow shaft of daylight beside him and lanterns belowIn-engine · WIP
The Spiral Stope, cavern ramp. Daylight shaft and flame lanterns, lit in real time with Lumen.
In-engine: Ash fights a crawling enemy in the slag pits, with the prompt 'Rage is full. Unleash it'In-engine · WIP
The slag pits. Combat with the rage meter full. The debug HUD is on.
In-engine: Ash before a heavy timbered doorway glowing with warm lightIn-engine · WIP
The exit. Timbered doorways and a warm glow beyond.
In-engine: Ash in Tregan's hall, a fog-filled mine floor lit by braziers, a guard calling outIn-engine · WIP
Tregan's hall. The first boss arena, with ground fog and brazier light.

Captured from the current build on 5-7 October 2026. Placeholder character bodies and debug text are still on screen; that's where we honestly are.

Where it's going

The vision

Concept art and mock-ups that show the game we're building toward. These are AI-generated targets for mood and design. They aren't screenshots, and they aren't final art.

Concept art: Amara kneels to tend a boy's scraped knee in a sunny village lane while villagers go about their dayConcept art
Amara, in a living Everly. The game opens in a town full of people with their own lives.
Concept art: Ash and Amara lean on a stone bridge at sunset as she points down the river, a fisherman and a boy belowConcept art
A warm first act. Everly as it is before the town is sealed away.
Concept art: a whole village breaks into golden light and drifting orbs while a traveler kneels on the road, reaching outConcept art
The seal. Everly, its people and their homes, broken into light and scattered underground.
Concept art: a vast spiral mine with timber ramps around a deep pit, lanterns and a single shaft of daylightConcept art
The Spiral Stope. The first dungeon: lantern light, darkness between.
Concept art: Ash rolls aside as a huge armoured boss slams a hammer into the stone floor of a brazier-lit hallConcept art
Boss fights. Heavy, readable, firelit.
Concept art: in an emptied village at twilight, a glowing orb cracks open and a cottage rebuilds itself as an old craftsman stands in its doorwayConcept art
Bringing someone home. An orb opens, a home is rebuilt, and a person returns.

Vision mock-ups

Mock-up of a title screen: AMARA in carved gold letters beside a lantern-lit mine entrance above a river town at dusk, with a menuVision mock-up
Title screen. A mood target for the main menu. The real title screen is being built.
Mock-up of build mode: a glowing outline of a cottage placed on an empty riverside plot, with a slim panel reading Place HomeVision mock-up
Build mode. Placing a rescued home back in Everly. A design target, not the shipped UI.
The experiment

How we build

The founder isn't an engineer and has never worked in games. He sets the direction, makes the creative calls and plays everything. Claude Code agents do the engineering, research and testing.

Direction

  • Story, look and design calls
  • Plays every build
  • "Done" means approved in-game

Six agent lanes

ProductionBuild & pipelineCombat & enemiesLevelsLook & lightingThe town
  • A shared project graph: each deliverable lists what it waits on, so no lane polishes ahead of the core
  • A studio handbook that every agent reads and updates, so nothing learned is lost
  • Research with sources: GDC talks, Epic docs, papers

Gates

  • Automated checks before "done": walkable doorways, nothing floating, no white floors
  • A packaged build at every milestone
  • A job lock so heavy engine runs never collide

Where it stands (8 Oct 2026)

PlayableThe first dungeon, the Spiral Stope, in a packaged build: rolls, blocks, a rage meter, enemy groups and the first boss hall
~95 fpsAverage in the newest packaged build at 2560x1440, across eight rooms of the Spiral Stope*
1 weekFrom the first line of code (30 Sep, 10:54) to the first packaged build (7 Oct, 18:35)
0 dropoutsAudio in an automated 200-second boss fight. The same test logged 180-266 before the fix
Boss checkTregan has a real throne, and an automated boss fight on the real level passes. The throne's final look waits on the founder's OK
6 lanesAgents working in parallel from one project map, so nobody polishes ahead of the core
OpenEvery deliverable, done or not, is public on the Progress page

*An off-screen benchmark on 8 Oct 2026: a fixed camera path through eight rooms, rendered at 75% resolution and upscaled to 2560x1440, no frame cap, on a stopgap Intel i3 with an RTX 4080 SUPER. The target is 60 fps on the final hardware. "Playable" means the founder can play it; whether each fight is fun yet is tracked on the Progress page.

Cleanup, not growth: after a code review on 7 Oct, dead and duplicate code was removed, taking the game's C++ from about 74,000 to about 61,000 lines.

What's hard so far: code, systems, tools and research move fast. Animation, art direction and "does this feel good?" are where AI agents are weakest, so every look and feel decision is made by a person on real renders and real play.
Next

Roadmap

The goal is a 12-15 minute playable vertical slice at the end of October 2026: a living Everly, the descent, fights that are fun against every enemy we ship, the first boss, and the trip home that rebuilds one person's house. We'll cut content before we cut quality.

M0
Safe and unblockedVersion control, a packaged build, a frame budget
27 of 32
M1
The fun coreThe first enemies and the first boss are fun to fight
46 of 62
M2
The whole loop, roughTown, descent, boss, home, rebuild, save, in one packaged build
72 of 93
M3
The look lockedA grounded-stylized look approved on real renders
15 of 27
M4
Art and lightThe route and the town brought up to the target look
9 of 54
M5
Ship the sliceThree clean packaged runs in a row
0 of 5

Deliverables done per milestone, from the project graph (26 Oct 2026, 13:25). There is no release date. See every deliverable, done and not done →

The studio

XenoState

Founded in September 2026 by Ryan Miller, who isn't an engineer and has used Claude every day since early 2026.

The next step is a small team of friends from outside the games industry, each working with Claude and each owning a lane under the same graph and handbook. That's the real test: can creativity and AI, without industry experience, make something people want to play?

Before Amara: built the same way

  • An AI-run lead-nurturing and email system for an employer: 800+ leads, send gates, reply triage, 6,000+ automated tests
  • A hub that coordinates Claude agents across 7+ projects
  • A live e-commerce site with online checkout for a family business
  • An audio-mastering pipeline and game tools with automated tests
Follow the build

Come along

Dev logs, short clips from the build, and the occasional live stream. Patreon supporters help keep the experiment going.

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Contact

Say hello

Publishers, partners, players, or anyone curious about the experiment.