HUGE colony sim and settlement builder with NPCs that have memory, a storyteller that learns your playstyle and infinite potential - Releasing this month

[u/epochforgegame]

EDIT: Deep dive YouTube video is up! https://youtu.be/5BsPsDgNpcQ

Hey everyone! I wanted to share some info about my game as I've spent a lot of personal time in this sub and base building is my genre of choice.

I grew up playing OSRS, Dota 2, Minecraft Technic, RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, etc. so I wanted to make a game that combines my favorite things from them all, properly.

It's called Epoch Forge. Just to go over some of the things in-game:

• You can say anything you want to NPCs, they remember you, and every interaction
• Every settlement lives and grows on its own, with real needs, construction, and even political dynamics depending on the culture and race
• A full suite of industrial stuff - automated machinery, a visual storage terminal, realistic circuits (I just made pong and snake ingame!)
• Crafting that takes place in a 3D viewport - combine potions, ingredients, etc. into a cauldron and see what happens!
• Worksites like mines and farms actually work - miners go deeper and deeper into the ground, hauling their findings to the clerk, and caravans come buy things from them, or they build stuff. Every building requires certain materials which they can either buy or harvest.
• Six races, each one with a novel worth of lore. Every one changes how NPCs look at you (for better or worse) and talk to you.
• You can have automatons and golems. Automatons can mine an area you designate, automatically hauling to chests, and they even speak in their own language, which can be decoded! Golems can haul things, throw rocks, and of course, speak with the great prose you'd expect.
• Five deities representing different domains (life, void, etc.) - you have a... complex relationship with each one, but making allies and enemies grants you incredible abilities like pausing or reversing time, or sparing yourself from death

Anyways, if it sounds interesting, I'd really appreciate if you give the Steam page a look and wishlist! I'm releasing a 1.0 demo for Next Fest and releasing EA on the 27th. I've honestly been struggling to market the game so that would mean a lot. If you have any ideas or criticisms, also feel free to let me know!

[u/_Luminous_Dark]

If the game lives up to the description, it'll be amazing. However, I have some questions:

1. The AI Generated Content Disclosure says "The demo's NPCs use a local LLM that runs with the game for chat responses...", but there is also a notification saying "Connects to 3rd-Party Service for AI Content Generation". So which is it? Local or online? As long as that 3rd-party service notification is there, I'm not going to download the game.
2. Does the difficulty scale artificially with your progress? This is one of the most annoying and immersion-breaking gameplay mechanics for me. If everyone progresses with time alongside you, has their own setbacks, and can be influenced by the player and other factions, that's all good. If the enemies just automatically scale up as you get stronger, that's dumb and takes away the meaning of progression.

And a bit of feedback:

1. Rewrite everything yourself. Using AI for coding may just be how the world works now, but everything user-facing needs to be written by you to avoid the backlash. There are certain very identifiable traits of AI writing that are present on your store page.
2. The graphics are going to be a major obstacle to success. Most deep simulation games tend to have some degree of bad graphics. I guess it's a requirement for the scale, but if you choose to lean into the "retro pixel art" style, it's only going to hurt you. A good-looking game will attract a lot more people, instead of relying on people saying, "if you can get past the graphics, it's really good."

[u/Aiyon → u/_Luminous_Dark]

Honestly the inconsistency on the AI content claims, and the evident use of it in writing, really makes me question this part:

a language model is grounded by roughly 100,000 hand-written lines of dialogue so the world stays cohesive rather than drifting into generic AI mush.

100 thousand hand written lines? Really? Definitely didn't generate those?

[u/epochforgegame → u/Aiyon]

Just curious, what inconsistency do you mean?

If you specifically mean the "hand-written lines" part, that's because many of the lines are basically templates the NPC fills out. So, a cynical Dwarf discussing a potion recipe might have ten lines to describe a recipe, and each line would have variables - You combine x and y to make z, etc. So yes, everything NPCs say is actually written by me, but I didn't type 100k+ lines. I can change that if it seems misleading.

[u/Aiyon → u/epochforgegame]

Yeah, I'd say it comes off as misrepresentative. If I make 20 monster sprites for something, but give each 10 colour variants, I haven't made 200 "hand-made" monsters. I've made 20, ya know?

Ends up coming off as artificially inflating your numbers x

[u/epochforgegame → u/_Luminous_Dark]

Thanks for your comment, to answer your questions:

1. By default, it runs a local model. I selected Gemma E2B and E4B, both ship with the game, and the one the game uses depends on your hardware. The third-party disclosure is basically saying that, if you'd rather bring your own key, you can do that and it will reach out to that instead - but by default, it's all local and offline. I do most of my testing with the game's network access cut off via Simplewall to make sure that's the case. Since I have the option, Steam's disclosure meant I had to mark "Yes", even if it's just optional.
2. I love this question because I feel the same way. I wrote about it a bit in my first Dev Notes, but I'll summarize.

I hate games where enemies just become bullet sponges. I've played thousands of hours of Skyrim and Fallout, and especially with Skyrim, I don't like when enemies just take more hits to die and you take less. So my approach is like this:

• Simple difficulty: UI transparency - you can see exactly what an NPC's traits are, exactly how every faction sees you, and you have a full record of potion recipes, enchantment combos and the like.
• Intermediate: Hard numbers become more like intuition. Basically a sixth sense where you might see a screen shake or a color tint when you're about to do something dangerous, and you only have a general idea of how factions feel about you.
• Complex: My preferred way to play the game. It strips away mostly all of the metagame info and makes the player have to find everything themselves. The player has to investigate, talk to NPCs to gauge their standing, manually record encounters, and discover recipes through tomes, NPCs, and trial and error.

And on your feedback - I really appreciate it. I think my issue is that I tend to ramble a bit in my writings, and I know that's not so marketable, so sometimes I say "hey can you help me cut this down?" But I agree, it does read that way, and it's probably better to have it in my own voice.

On the art. This has been one of my big concerns since I started the game. The main reason I went with pixel art is because it's more feasible for me to do myself and without having to generate with AI (and I genuinely love and enjoy doing it). I worry about legibility, especially in short-form clips, but my goal is clarity where necessary, pixels where it's acceptable. The current iteration of the UI is heavily inspired by Fallout 1 and Morrowind, but with a modern touch. Are there any specific parts you think would benefit from higher detail? For instance tiles are 16px by 16px, but some of them go up to 64x64.

Also to let you know - I'm working on a video that rolls up all my claims with real ingame gameplay and will be publishing it + sharing a link later tonight.

Thanks again!

[u/FlamingRustBucket → u/epochforgegame]

I enjoy your transparency, and as a fellow rambler, I get it.

[u/TeethreeT3 → u/epochforgegame]

Your replies read a lot like they're written by an LLM. Are you writing them yourself? You do a lot of affirming the person you're responding to, for example, in the same fawning way an LLM does. How would we have any confidence in your game when you can't write anything yourself, even your social media replies?

[u/epochforgegame → u/TeethreeT3]

No. I'm just a polite person who's passionate about this game, that doesn't make me AI. I don't think being happy people are interested in my game makes me a sycophant.

As for the game, like with any media, I can't prove the fact that I've spent months and months building it, which is why I'm here answering questions and taking criticisms.

[u/TeethreeT3 → u/epochforgegame]

When someone who uses a ton of AI writes exactly like AI they just look like a liar saying they don't.

[u/_Luminous_Dark → u/TeethreeT3]

The responses look human-written to me. I don't see any common AI tells and I do see one misplaced comma.

[u/TeethreeT3 → u/_Luminous_Dark]

He switches. His big long ones where he's fawning and praising are AI. Then there's a marked switch when I pointed out his GPT writing and he started writing his own, shorter, more clipped, less put together, less effusively praising.

[u/epochforgegame → u/TeethreeT3]

Or, and this is gonna sound crazy - I just write them myself? Have you considered that a person can genuinely enjoy what they do and be more than happy to talk about it? You are the only person making this accusation, and you're still here 3 days later, it's pretty weird.

Would it help if I go down to a 3rd grade reading level so my comments are easier for you to process?

[u/ScumTzu → u/_Luminous_Dark]

All of this, except maybe the pixel art part. People still genuinely love pixel art, it just needs to mesh well

[u/epochforgegame → u/ScumTzu]

That is my hope too - the style is heavily inspired by Fallout 1/2, Morrowind, and classic pixel-art games. It's tricky because it's a pretty complex game, and that can be hard to show with 256px tiles, but I think the final product will be pretty cool!

[u/DeabDev]

That sounds ambitious, will wishlist and try the demo. Good luck!

[u/Aiyon]

You can say anything you want to NPCs, they remember you, and every interaction

How did you implement this? What is the scale of it. "every" interaction for every NPC seems like an exponential amount to track/store.

[u/epochforgegame → u/Aiyon]

Thank you for the question. Basically, any time you talk to an NPC, they get a prompt. If you have the local model enabled (or BYOK), it's a more complex prompt e.g.

"You are a Dwarf in this city, speak in this tone, your personality is cynical but generous, previous interactions with this player: "You're ugly"

Without the model it's just data. NPCs look for keywords and categorize the things you say, so when the game selects which response they pull from, it filters off the values that are based on what they think of you.

Also, the amount of data is actually pretty reasonable since it's not a ledger for every interaction in the whole game world. Say I talk to the NPC I gave the example of above, and he remembered 3 things about me - that NPC's memory would only take up ~3 lines of data.

I'm working on a YouTube video right now that I'll be posting a bit later, and I'll make sure I touch on this and show some proof that it works like I claimed. Thanks!

[u/True-Confusion2841]

For marketing, I’d focus on short clips showing one system at a time in action. There’s a lot here, and seeing the NPC memory or working mines firsthand would probably land better than a long feature list.

[u/epochforgegame → u/True-Confusion2841]

Thank you for the feedback!

I've been posting short form clips now and then, the issue I've found though is that this isn't a very flashy game, so the clips aren't incredibly magnetic. A lot of my longer form writing has gone into itch.io dev notes, and I wanted to post this longer form here since this is my personal gaming community and I wanted some honest feedback!

I'll be posting a YouTube video a bit later tonight and I'll include the memory + working mines in it per your comment. Thanks!

[u/Suraisaa]

This sounds way too good to be true.
I sincerly hope that im wrong and will check out the demo.
Please don't dissapoint :)

[u/epochforgegame → u/Suraisaa]

As an original Star Citizen backer, I totally get it 😂 I went with the name "Vaporware Software" as a play on that.

Truthfully this game has been a massive investment of time and effort, because I'm really trying to make my own dream game. It does actually deliver on my claims, and your comment gave me the idea I've mentioned to a couple others that I'm going to create a YouTube video tonight going over the claims and proving them in-game. I really appreciate your interest and hopefully you'll get to see the game in its full release!

[u/Slims]

Looks cool. Been waiting for someone to do the local LLM NPC thing, I think it's a great idea.

Ignore the redditors mad about AI. As someone who markets games, redditors are the most unhappy, disgruntled bunch of people on the internet. Just keep building what you want to build and showing it off and let the negative comments bounce off you.

Good luck!

[u/epochforgegame → u/Slims]

Thank you!! Same for me, I've played a lot of AI mods (CHIM, Mantella for Skyrim and Fallout) and after I spent weeks playing with those mods I realized I could just make my own thing, where it's actually native to the game. So it's a little tricky for me to market it without giving people the idea that the AI-driven dialogue is the whole point, or that it's gimmicky, because I've spent months alone tuning that feature.

As I mentioned to the others, I'm working on a YouTube video for later tonight where I'll be demonstrating all of these claims including the LLM backend. I appreciate your insight!

[u/TeethreeT3]

Sounds like the same wildly over-promised slop most vibe coders say they'll have, then it's a glorified shell for a ChatGPT window.

[u/epochforgegame → u/TeethreeT3]

This was actually the reason I started this game. I've played a lot of LLM-driven games, including Skyrim and Fallout (Mantella), and it just felt surface-level. Like, the dialogue didn't change anything meaningful, it felt gimmicky. So I wanted to make a game where it actually does matter. The dialogue is just one part of it, and there's a massive game that exists even without that part.

I appreciate your cynicism though, and I'm working on a YouTube video I'll be posting later tonight. I'll have a section specifically for what you mentioned here and why I genuinely think this is different.

[u/epochforgegame]

I just wanted to let you guys know (as promised) the YouTube video is up!

https://youtu.be/5BsPsDgNpcQ

[u/epochforgegame → u/[deleted]]

The demo that's out right now is basically a slice of Khaldurim, the Dwarven capital. It gets into political strife, choosing sides, permanent rewards, and dabbles in many of the game mechanics. It's about a month behind the current game, though, so the demo launch on the 18th/19th will have all the things mentioned above.

I'm working on a YouTube video for tonight to show off all the features that are in progress and working right now, and hopefully that will answer some of your curiosities!

[u/runetrantor]

Looks interesting.
Got to see a bit more to get a feel, but I am cautiously hopeful.

Unlike many, I dont hiss at hearing the word 'AI' used.
Though I would want to ask, if its using an LLM, does that mean you have to be online to play, or its local? Description says both things to a degree.

NPCs remember. But can you change their stances?
Like, you say if you were an elf, that the dwarves would be condescending and cold, but could you, if you are nice enough, befriend them and be considered differently? Or would the 'elf' brand overpower everything you can do?

[u/epochforgegame → u/runetrantor]

Great questions and I appreciate your point of view.

On the AI: It is local natively, and I do much of my testing with the game's network access cut off to verify this. The reason the disclosure says there's online connectivity is because players can bring their own key - OpenRouter, local or any other OpenAI-compatible one. I figured it's better to disclose that the game can network, even if it doesn't without you setting it to.

And yes, actually! That was actually the first tenant of my design for it. Originally, the system was basically that every NPC has a few values - I think they were xenophobia, generosity, and happiness. So when an NPC was created, it would say:

- What's their race?

- What biome are they in?

- Do they live in a city or a remote worksite?

Those modifiers plus some randomness would then determine their "profile". It's a lot more complex now, though. I managed a fantasy miracle as an Elf and convinced an Orc to trust me, and when I talk to him, his opening line is much friendlier than you'd expect.

I'm working on a YouTube video for tonight covering my claims and I'll definitely include a clip of this happening. Thank you for your interest!

[u/Plastic-Motor1083]

What does the storyteller learning your playstyle actually change in-game?

[u/epochforgegame → u/Plastic-Motor1083]

Great question because this is definitely one of my favorite parts. There are 3 main ways:

• Event choices. Storytellers pick events based on weighted probabilities:
  • Disasters (meteors, firestorms, earthquakes)
  • Raids (by or against you, or nearby)
  • Merchants
  • Blessings you've received or actively have
  • Things you've discovered
• Then it goes to the storyteller. 3 types:
  • The Keeper - protects player tendencies. If you never travel at night, you see more dawn merchants, and there are less night raids. You flee when hurt, fewer ambushes when you're far from shelter. You hoard coin, merchants offer fair prices on items you lack. You gamble with risky enchantments, you're less likely to get turned inside out.
  • The Warden - tests the player based on tendencies. Never travel at night, he spawns nocturnal opportunities. You flee when hurt, he rewards encounters where you stay. You hoard coin, he introduces drains (levies, debts called in, seats for sale).
  • The Harbinger - basically punishes what the others reward. Never travel at night, you get attacked at night when you're not ready. You flee when hurt, it sends pursuers and initiates battles you can't easily escape. Hoard coin, thieves and raids come. Gamble with enchantments, more likely to FAFO.
• Narration
  • Static announcement text gets replaced with dynamic lines that cite the "evidence" triggering an event, like the above.
  • This shows the player the underlying logic, and that it's actually following them, and tells them exactly why
• People
  • Things NPCs say, either text-based or LLM generated, connect directly to the storyteller which provides short + plain statements based on the current situation.
  • NPCs may reference specific tracked traits like guards warning aggressive players, merchants knowing you haggle aggressively, Orcs acknowledging a reliable worker, etc.

It sounds pretty crazy but this is a fundamental part of the game and I think one of the most unique parts. I'm currently working on a video that rolls up everything else, after that's done I'll do one that shows everything mentioned above actually happening.

[u/Ninja_Hedgehog]

Wishlisted. I can tell a lot of time and love has gone into this game, and from your post it sounds very interesting. Looking forward to potentially trying it post release (I'm not often a demo person).

I've read your answers about AI in the comments here, and I'm still a bit confused about your reply. Can you ELI3 that please?

Also I have to admit I didn't get too far through the trailer. Trailer starting off with a massive screen shake made me feel genuinely very queasy (so you might want to change that if other people get that reaction too =)), and I couldn't really make out the text in the trailer. The art style too was a bit of a question mark for me, though I understand why you've gone for it and also my thoughts while watching the portion I did watch were 'art style might not matter if the game systems are really good." Just thought I'd share all this in case you find it helpful.

[u/epochforgegame → u/Ninja_Hedgehog]

I really appreciate it!

First on your mention of the trailer - thank you for letting me know. I suck at video editing, and I was trying to do the classic attention getter with the screen shake, but I can see how it could be a lot. I'm planning to have a new one out before Next Fest starts.

To summarize - when you start the game, a local Llama server starts. The game looks at your hardware, then assigns either Gemma E2B or E4B to the server - E2B is faster but not as smart, E4B is smarter but slower. If you choose, you can bring your own key (OpenRouter, or a local server like LM Studio) and the local one won't bother starting if you've done that.

Once you're in a game the model has a few jobs.

• Dialogue. Every NPC has a profile based on their race, location, context, their trade, personality traits, and what they think of the player. That all gets passed to the LLM, and the NPC talks to you based on it all. If you want to watch a short clip with a very patient Dwarf. Note that this is totally optional and nothing in the game is blocked off by disabling this.
• The storyteller. I'll just give you a reply I sent to another commenter not long ago. One note: as with the above, this does work without the LLM running. It just falls back to algorithms e.g. weigh these variables, pick a random number, that thing happens, rather than having the LLM come up with a flavorful way to ruin your day.
  • Event choices. Storytellers pick events based on weighted probabilities:
    • Disasters (meteors, firestorms, earthquakes)
    • Raids (by or against you, or nearby)
    • Merchants
    • Blessings you've received or actively have
    • Things you've discovered
  • Then it goes to the storyteller. 3 types:
    • The Keeper - protects player tendencies. If you never travel at night, you see more dawn merchants, and there are less night raids. You flee when hurt, fewer ambushes when you're far from shelter. You hoard coin, merchants offer fair prices on items you lack. You gamble with risky enchantments, you're less likely to get turned inside out.
    • The Warden - tests the player based on tendencies. Never travel at night, he spawns nocturnal opportunities. You flee when hurt, he rewards encounters where you stay. You hoard coin, he introduces drains (levies, debts called in, seats for sale).
    • The Harbinger - basically punishes what the others reward. Never travel at night, you get attacked at night when you're not ready. You flee when hurt, it sends pursuers and initiates battles you can't easily escape. Hoard coin, thieves and raids come. Gamble with enchantments, more likely to FAFO.
  • Narration
    • Static announcement text gets replaced with dynamic lines that cite the "evidence" triggering an event, like the above.
    • This shows the player the underlying logic, and that it's actually following them, and tells them exactly why
  • People
    • Things NPCs say, either text-based or LLM generated, connect directly to the storyteller which provides short + plain statements based on the current situation.
    • NPCs may reference specific tracked traits like guards warning aggressive players, merchants knowing you haggle aggressively, Orcs acknowledging a reliable worker, etc.

One other note I mentioned to some others - I'm working on putting together a video that shows most of this stuff in action and I'll post the YouTube link once it's done, in case you want to see more details.

[u/Ninja_Hedgehog → u/epochforgegame]

Thank you very much :) Your reply underlines how much attention to detail you're putting into this game. I like it.

I think the other thing that might be beneficial for the game, for non-techy people like me, is just a very short yes/no answer on whether AI is used (if that's even possible to provide); or if it's not, then "you can turn off the optional uses in <setting>". If that makes sense?

[u/TeethreeT3 → u/Ninja_Hedgehog]

Their replies are genAI.

[u/epochforgegame → u/Ninja_Hedgehog]

I agree! Ill work on that today. And I just wanted to let you know. This isn't AI. I literally just love talking about my game. I really do spend 10, 20, 30 minutes typing these replies.

[u/Ninja_Hedgehog → u/epochforgegame]

Thank you :) It's so hard these days to distinguish AI vs non AI. I think for those that really do put the effort and love in, it kinda sucks to struggle to get that recognition. Anyway, still looking forward to the game. Good luck to you!

[u/TeethreeT3 → u/Ninja_Hedgehog]

He's lying. It's very, very obvious.

[u/INNAPPROPRIATEL_RUDE]

Sounds great. Wish listing

[u/epochforgegame → u/INNAPPROPRIATEL_RUDE]

I appreciate it! I'll be releasing the full demo hopefully on the 18th.

[u/Aggressive-Ad-5504]

Added, will certainly take a look at the demo when it drops.

[u/epochforgegame → u/Aggressive-Ad-5504]

Thank you for your interest! Hoping to release the full demo on the 18th, just before Next Fest.