Claude Plays RollerCoaster Tycoon via Command Line
Claude, an AI assistant, attempts to play the classic simulation game RollerCoaster Tycoon entirely through text-based command line interface, navigating the
Someone got Claude to play RollerCoaster Tycoon through the command line, which is pretty wild when you think about it.
They forked OpenRCT2 and built a CLI tool called rctctl that translates the game’s GUI buttons into text commands Claude can understand. Instead of clicking around, Claude reads text-based map data and issues commands like adjusting ride prices or fixing park problems.
Check it out:
- Watch it work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaFBNIH1gS4
- Fork to try yourself: https://github.com/jaysobel/OpenRCT2
- Full session transcript: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://gist.githubusercontent.com/jaysobel/dfeed9a65ce7209274acf9ada0eaa65e/raw/claude_code_rollercoaster_tycoon_transcript.html
The transcript uses Simon Willison’s claude-code-transcripts tool (https://github.com/simonw/claude-code-transcripts) to capture everything.
Turns out AI coding assistants work better when you skip the GUI entirely and just give them terminal access to whatever you’re building. Kind of a throwback to when everything was command-line anyway.
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