Game Engine as a Tool: Building a Walking Simulator in Unity with Claude MCP

Not scheduled

Code Completion Credits Range Language of instruction Semester
307DHE credit 3 24 exercise hours (45 min) of instruction per semester, 57 to 72 hours of self-study English, Czech winter

Subject guarantor

Hynek ALT

Name of lecturer(s)

Vojtěch RADAKULAN

Department

The subject provides Department of Photography

Contents

Date and time: two-day block, Thursday and Friday 10:00–17:00 (date TBC), FAMU computer lab

A two-day hands-on workshop in which participants will build a short, playable “walking simulator” from scratch—an exploratory game with no combat and no score, whose primary means of expression are movement through space, light, sound, and environmental storytelling. We’ll be working in the Unity game engine, which we’ll connect to the Claude language model via the MCP (Model Context Protocol): participants can then create objects, edit the scene, and write or edit C# scripts directly within the editor. The workshop is open even to complete beginners; rather than teaching syntax, we’ll focus on how to give the model tasks, monitor its work, and rewrite it.

Day 1 – Space

– the walking simulator as both a genre and an art form (Dear Esther, Gone Home, Proteus, Firewatch, The Stanley Parable); its relationship to the documentary, the installation, and spatial montage

– Setup and navigation in Unity: scene, hierarchy, GameObject, component, material, prefab

– Setting up the MCP for Unity package and integrating it with Claude; what the editor assistant can handle and where it falls short

– Blocking out terrain and scene architecture, first-person controls, spatial scale, and walking pace

– Lighting and atmosphere, importing ready-made assets

Day 2 – Storytelling

– environmental storytelling: what the space communicates without text; placement of clues, objects, and signs

– triggers and simple scripting in C# generated and debugged via Claude; reading error messages

– sound and music, spatial audio, footsteps, and silence

– post-processing, visual tuning, basic optimization

– building and exporting the project, final group playthrough and reflection (what the author did, what the model did, where authorship lies)

Learning outcomes

After completing the workshop, students will:

– be familiar with the basic logic and interface of the Unity engine (scene, components, prefabs, build),

– be able to independently build and export a short, playable first-person scene,

– will be able to connect Unity to a language model via MCP and use it to work on a project: formulate a task, verify the result, and correct errors,

– will understand the basic tools of spatial and environmental storytelling and be able to apply them in their own designs;

– is able to critically reflect on the role of generative tools in their own creative practice (authorship, dependence on the tool, and its limitations).

Prerequisites and other requirements

No prior experience with game engines or programming is required. Knowledge of Blender or other modeling software is ideal.

– Your own laptop (Windows 10/11 or macOS; 16 GB of RAM recommended, 8 GB minimum; approximately 30 GB of free disk space) and a mouse.

– Unity Hub and Unity 6 LTS, Claude Desktop (or Claude Code), and the MCP for Unity package must be installed in advance. The instructor will send detailed installation instructions one week before the workshop; the first hour of the first day is reserved for troubleshooting installation issues.

– An Anthropic account (the free plan is sufficient; a plan with a higher limit is preferred)

– Reading proficiency in English (for documentation and error messages) is preferred.

Literature

Primary Sources (games to play before the workshop; demos are sufficient):

– The Chinese Room. Dear Esther. 2012.

– Fullbright. Gone Home. 2013.

– Ed Key and David Kanaga. Proteus. 2013.

– Campo Santo. Firewatch. 2016.

– Galactic Cafe. The Stanley Parable. 2013.

– MCP for Unity (open-source package) – repository README and setup guide. Online: GitHub.

Evaluation methods and criteria

– Active participation on both days

– Submission of your own playable build (2–5 minutes of gameplay)

– Entries will be evaluated based on the completeness and clarity of the game world and the extent of your original creative work, not on the technical complexity of the final product.

Note

– The number of spots is limited by the classroom’s technical capacity

– All software used is available to students free of charge (Unity Personal; MCP for Unity is open source); a free Anthropic account is sufficient for the scope of the workshop.

– It is recommended that you bring your own materials (photos, audio recordings, texts, 3D scans) that can be incorporated into the scene.

Further information

No schedule has been prepared for this course

The subject is a part of the following study plans