Critter Haven: Homie's Journey

Your cozy little critter habitat… until the Ship needs defending.

Homie's ship crash-landed on Elyndor, a green and strange planet full of tiny creatures. Watch them wander your habitat, collect the gold and items they produce, fuse them into rarer critters, evolve them — and when the Ship is in danger, drop them on the battlefield and defend it!

It is an idle / incremental habitat game that lives in a small, always-on-top window on your desktop, mixed with a short auto-battler tower defense.

Features

• 🐾 Living habitat — creatures are born as your energy bar fills, walk around, and produce gold and unique items while you work, study or just relax.
• 🧺 Chest & selling — sell items one by one or all at once (reserve the ones you want to keep for evolution).
• ⬆️ Upgrades — gold production, spawn speed, habitat and chest capacity, and even offline progress.
• 🔀 Fusion — merge two creatures to roll a new one; rare fusions have a much better chance of rares and specials.
• 🌱 Evolution — every species has its own upgrades paid with its own items.
• 📖 Album — discover every species of the planet (pity timers guarantee your rares).
• 🛡️ Ship Defense — 12 waves and a boss. Place your critters on the field (each one costs gold), pick one of 3 cards between waves, and watch them fight. You never lose your creatures if you are defeated.
• 🎁 Reward chests — gold and creature items, plus the travel item that unlocks the next planet. Three danger levels (Normal / Hard / Brutal) for better rewards.
• 🪟 Desktop-friendly — borderless window, three sizes, "always on top" switch, tiny CPU use.
• 🌍 English and Portuguese — switch in the Settings window.
• 💾 Auto-save — close it any time.

How to play

1. Click your first creature to pet it. Creatures drop items from time to time.
2. Open the Chest (bag icon) to sell items, then buy Upgrades.
3. Fill the energy bar to get new creatures. Use Fusion when the habitat is full.
4. Spend items in Evolution to make each species stronger.
5. Click Defense to protect the Ship. Drag creature cards onto the ground, hit Start, and pick a card between waves.
6. Win to open a Reward chest and find the item you need to travel to the next planet.

Defense hotkeys: Space pause · 1 2 3 speed · Esc abandon. You can drag the window by clicking any empty background. Quit from Settings → Quit the game.

Download & install (Windows)

You do not need Python or anything else — everything is included.

• Portable zip: download CritterHaven-0.1.0-windows.zip, extract it anywhere, and double-click CritterHaven.exe.

"Windows protected your PC" (SmartScreen)? The game is not code-signed (it is a free indie prototype), so Windows may warn you the first time. Click More info → Run anyway.

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), ~150 MB of disk space, 4 GB RAM. Saves are stored in %APPDATA%\CritterHaven\saves. Not available yet for macOS / Linux.

⚠️ Made entirely with AI ("vibe coding")

I want to be completely transparent: this game was made 100% with AI, from the first line of code to the last sprite and sound.

• Code: written with Claude Code (Anthropic) through conversation ("vibe coding") — gameplay systems, UI, balancing simulators, tests, and the Windows build.
• Creature sprites and animations: generated with PixelLab (AI pixel art), then assembled into sprite sheets by AI-written scripts.
• UI, icons and logo: drawn with Aseprite driven by AI scripts.
• Habitat music and all sound effects: AI-generated.
• My role: idea, direction, design decisions, playtesting and curation — a human guiding the AI.

The only parts not made by AI are the third-party assets credited below, which were made by human artists and musicians. If AI-made games are not your thing, I completely understand.

Credits

Third-party assets (made by humans — thank you!)

• Tileset, backgrounds and scenery: FREE Platformer Assets by GandalfHardcore — https://gandalfhardcore.itch.io/
• Battle music (3 tracks): original music by Marllon Silva (xDeviruchi) — https://xdeviruchi.itch.io/
• Font: VT323 by Peter Hull (SIL Open Font License) — https://fonts.google.com/specimen/VT323

Tools & libraries: Python, pygame-ce, PyTMX, pywin32, PyInstaller, Tiled, Aseprite, Claude Code, PixelLab.

🎨🎵 Artists, animators and musicians — let's work together!

This is a prototype, and I would love for it to become a game with hand-made art and music. If you are a pixel artist, animator, UI artist, composer or sound designer and the project interests you — even for a small part, a revenue-share idea, or just to chat — please get in touch:

• 📧 henrique.renatho@gmail.com
• or message me on my itch.io profile.

Tell me a bit about your work (a link to a portfolio helps). All credit will be given to everyone who contributes.

Planned next

• Three more planets: Calyra (desert), Aerthos (clouds) and Glacivar (ice & volcanoes), each with new creatures, enemies and music.
• More cards, more enemies, more evolutions.

Feedback, bug reports and ideas are very welcome in the comments. Thanks for playing! 🐾