the fine print, in large friendly letters
About the Squirrel
What this is
ArcadeSquirrel is an independent one-person workshop doing two things: making browser games (starting with Exit Liquidity, a stock-trading roguelite) and building a game-discovery engine that recommends games based on what players actually say they feel like to play. Both are built in the open — the dev log has the real numbers, including the unflattering ones.
The squirrel is the editorial policy: evaluate everything, stash only the good ones, remember where they are.
Where AI is involved — exactly
We think you deserve to know how the things you read and play were made. Here is the honest breakdown:
- The games: designed and directed by a human. AI (Anthropic's Claude) is used as a programming and design assistant — writing code, suggesting approaches, debugging. Every mechanic and decision is human-chosen; a human plays, tests, and ships every build.
- This website: designed and coded with heavy AI assistance, directed and reviewed by a human.
- The dev log: written by a human. AI sometimes helps outline or edit; the experiences, numbers, and opinions are real and ours.
- The upcoming discovery engine: the recommendations are machine-generated by design — that's the whole point. The engine reads thousands of human-written player reviews and finds games that feel alike. The short verdicts on those pages are human-reviewed before publishing, and data like prices and review counts is refreshed automatically.
- What we don't do: no AI-generated review scores pretending to be human opinions, no fake authors, no AI-written "personal experiences" that didn't happen.
Short version: a human with taste, aimed carefully, using a very capable robot. When that balance changes, this page changes first.
Contact
Found a bug, want to say hi, or think the squirrel stashed the wrong game? [TODO: add contact email / socials before launch.]