I tested every effort level on Claude Opus 5.5

Summary
Marcelo from Clearmud tests Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 across different agentic effort levels in a coding environment to build a 3D Sonic the Hedgehog platformer clone with toggleable side, first-person, and over-the-shoulder views. He evaluates the generation times and plays each generated game, comparing visual fidelity, controls, and gameplay mechanics across the low, medium, high, extra-high, and ultra/max effort configurations.

What is shown

• [00:16] Marcelo displays the identical prompt used across sessions in T3 Code: asking Claude Opus 5.5 to create a folder for the effort level, build a 3D ultra-realistic Sonic clone, and implement camera toggling between traditional side view and over-the-shoulder racing view.
• [00:46] Breakdown of runtime across effort settings: low effort completed in 1m 46s, medium effort in 17m 39s, high effort in 30m 28s, extra-high in 1h 1m 26s, and max/ultra effort running for nearly two hours before hitting a usage limit and finishing in ~1h 53m.
• [02:26] Playthrough of the low-effort result (Comet Run 3D featuring Nova): rudimentary 3D geometric landscape, silent gameplay, basic rolling physics, and manual over-the-shoulder camera toggle.
• [03:46] Playthrough of medium effort (Volt Rush - Emerald Coast featuring Volt): added retro sound effects, music, textured checkered ramps, loop-de-loops, and automated controls switching between camera angles.
• [05:06] Playthrough of high effort (Brisk - Tidebreak Causeway featuring Brisk the armadillo): side view, chase view, and first-person helmet view with more elaborate environmental modeling and audio.
• [06:07] Playthrough of extra-high effort (Sunspire Rush featuring Kip): detailed background terrain, multiple camera modes, dynamic physics, and checkpoints.
• [07:49] Playthrough of another high-effort variation (Volt Rush - Sunspire Coast): high-speed track with glowing loops, bridge section, and first-person camera mode.
• [09:52] Playthrough of the ultra-effort generation (Ember Rush - Verdant Cascade featuring Ember): highly detailed graphics with ocean water shaders, animated waterfalls, grass, custom UI, sound effects, complex corkscrews, and a post-run score card.

Claims & numbers

• Claude Opus 5.5 low-effort generation completed in 1 minute and 46 seconds (presenter statement).
• Medium effort ran for 17 minutes and 39 seconds (presenter statement).
• High effort ran for 30 minutes and 28 seconds (presenter statement).
• Extra-high (x-high) effort ran for 1 hour and 1 minute (presenter statement).
• The longest run worked for 1 hour 51 minutes before reaching a Claude usage limit, then ran for an additional 1 minute 53 seconds after reset (presenter statement).
• Marcelo notes the ultra run spun up 11 specialist sub-agents (with up to 7 running concurrently) to handle terrain, lighting, physics, audio, and character modeling before he manually halted it (presenter statement / on-screen log).
• The presenter notes that none of the models created an exact 1:1 Sonic clone because of copyright and intellectual property protections, opting instead for original characters like pangolins and armadillos (presenter statement).

Notable quotes

• [00:46] "Low effort completed in less than two minutes with this request. Kind of wild, right?"
• [10:05] "So far the best splash screen, okay... Look at this background!"
• [12:47] "Clearly, the higher the effort, the better the clone."

Assessment
A real hands-on review and benchmark comparing Claude Opus 5.5's code generation across multiple effort tiers. Everything shown is authentic local execution of browser games generated directly from the agent's code logs.

Described by gemini-3.8-flash on 2026-09-29 from the video's audio and frames.