Build a browser MMO remake solo with Claude Code and a bug portal

Mark Dorsch, a one-person studio in Winnipeg, is building MapleVerse, an unofficial fan-made browser version of Pre-BB MapleStory (v83) with its own realtime server and Postgres saves. He does not write the code; Claude Code does, on one Claude Max subscription since July 2026. The project runs on a CLAUDE.md, 845 one-fact memory files and nine custom skills covering the test gate, deploys, the bug queue, patch notes and wiki pages. The core rule is never to invent a stat or drop rate but to find the original value and cite it in the commit. Testers file reports on a public portal; Claude Code pulls the queue, fixes each bug in its own git worktree, proves it in a headless Chrome harness of the real game, deploys and replies to the tester. At day's end one session coordinates the others into a single deploy.

Over about 126 days Mark ran 783 sessions on 102 days: roughly 5,800 commits across game, server, website and a Discord bot, about 24,000 wiki pages and 837 tester reports handled. The game covers four regions, all jobs to 4th advancement and about 1,400 quests. Token use was about 125 billion, 98% of it cache reads. Failures included a minute of 404s when one session built in a shared folder while another deployed, and a stale generated table that deleted items from five players' saves. Each led to a new rule or guard. Mark's role is direction, feel, playtesting and the community.

The write-up was drafted by Claude from git history and session logs and reviewed by Mark before posting, so the numbers come from the project's own logs. The game is in development and not launched. Unit tests missed visual bugs that the end-to-end harness caught. Parallel sessions sharing one folder broke each other's type checks until each got its own worktree.