Case Study - A solar-system arcade where each planet rewrites the physics

Educational Pygame side-scroller built to a strict course brief: pure Pygame, no engines. Started in late March 2025 as a live testbed for Claude Code and Sonnet 3.7, with per-planet gravity, quizzes, Suno tracks, and early ElevenLabs voices. Design by Daniela Flauto.

Client: VioletNova
Year: 2025
Service: Game Development, Python / Pygame, AI-assisted tooling

Game development

A solar-system arcade where each planet rewrites the physics

VioletNova is an educational Pygame side-scroller: Cadet Violet and the NOVA-22 AI companion fly through nine bodies, each with its own gravity, obstacles, quiz, and soundtrack. The course challenge was to build everything in Pygame, with no game engines allowed. Programming lead at Mellofattura; visual identity and pixel art by Daniela Flauto. Started late March 2025 partly to pressure-test Claude Code and Sonnet 3.7 the week they landed.

Pygame
Claude Code
Sonnet 3.7
Suno
ElevenLabs
Midjourney
Mackenzie 2025
Nebula Dream

Build path

How the systems came together

The development-side beats: the Claude Code experiment first, then a beta carrying gravity, quizzes, voices, and nine soundtracks. Design ownership stays with Daniela; the story here is the engineering.

Late March kickoff

Mackenzie Digital Games course. The professor’s brief was hard: ship a playable game in pure Pygame, with no Unity, no Godot, and no other engine. Development started in late March 2025.

Claude Code as the lab

Built while Claude Code and Sonnet 3.7 were brand new: the codebase was a live testbed for agent-assisted Python/Pygame work, with CLAUDE.md steering architecture and PT-BR UI.

Gravity as the mechanic

Nine celestial bodies, each with real relative gravity. Earth is the baseline; the Moon floats at 0.16x; Jupiter punishes at 2.4x. Same thrust input, rewritten physics per stage.

Systems around the loop

Post-level quizzes with explanations, NOVA-22 dialogue, Hold vs Flappy controls, three difficulties, JSON save for planet progress and high scores.

AI audio pipeline

Original per-planet tracks authored in Suno. Early ElevenLabs generations for welcome lines and character dialogue banks, wired through the game’s sound and dialogue managers.

Systems

Numbers the loop had to respect

Gravity multipliers, stage count, and control modes. This is the implementation surface that makes each planet feel different without writing a new game every time.

Celestial bodies

Eight planets plus the Moon, each with its own gravity, art pipeline, quiz, and BGM

Moon gravity

Lightest stage: same thrust input, floating trajectory

Jupiter gravity

Heaviest stage: thrust has to fight the giant

Control modes

Hold for continuous thrust, Flappy for burst taps

Difficulty tiers

Easy, Medium, and Hard, changing lives, checkpoints, power-ups, and obstacle speed

Planet soundtracks

Original Suno tracks, one bank per body, plus in-game music player

In play

Stages, splash, and transitions

Gameplay frames and planet transitions from the shipped beta. The visual direction is Daniela’s and her case study tells that story. These shots show what the systems had to drive.

Gameplay demo

Earth stage

Mercury stage

Mars

Moon

Neptune

Splash

Transition · Earth

Transition · Jupiter

Stack & credits

Python systems, AI tooling, design partnership

Midjourney helped explore some assets early; final character and stage art is Daniela’s. Audio generation (Suno + ElevenLabs) plugged into the same sound managers as the handmade SFX.

Technologies

Python
Pygame
Claude Code
Sonnet 3.7
Midjourney
Suno
ElevenLabs
JSON save

Open source on GitHub. Design case by Daniela Flauto. Programming: Marcello Gonzatto Birkan · Nebula Dream Interactive · 2025.

Where we are