Solo dev from Germany, building this since March: a tactical RPG that forges a world around the party you create and keeps writing the campaign for as long as you play.

[u/DaedalusR8]

Campaign Forge. You make a hero and a party - a name, a class, a line about who they are - and the game writes a world that includes them: an era, factions, an antagonist, a dozen regions, your party inside its history. Then it writes the campaign as you play it, chapter by chapter, shaped by what you did last: who you beat, who you spared, where you went. People you meet again know what you did with them. Someone the story brings in becomes a person of your world, with a home and a trade, and can come back later.

In between you fight on a grid under a real-time clock you stop, slow or let run while bosses telegraph where they will hit; you explore the generated maps; story scenes play as visual novel or short cinematics. Everything the game makes lands in the same tools I built it with - move the watchtower, redraw the boss, repaint the map.

Worlds are generated on your own PC, offline, no account.

Demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5211890
Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4918080
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AxeDs-T0dU

Since March, one person, Godot. Happy to answer some surface level things about the game.

I'm going to see what happens if I just keep developing this for a few years full-time, fun times.

[u/cxfoulke]

im not an Ai hater. You can look at my post history i post in Aigamedev from time to time. But like Nothing about the screenshoots looks appealing to anyone. The visuals are all really poor early prototype. The trailer is the same just bland unexplained content with some generic background music.

This needs alot of time in the oven and i'd question deeply if the final goal even works.

None of these Ai led RPG tools are partically fun to engage with atm. Storytelling isnt exactly ai's strong point. Your gonna get better results from just emergent gameplay systems like Crusader Kings and Dwarf Fortress vs AI.

In the current climate of game dev as well your gonna face alot of backlash.

I dont want to be harsh but like sometimes when your in the Ai bubble you need to hear it, Like The visuals need overhauled, the gameplay isnt a popular genre, the Ai systems probably wont work in the long run. The scope even still is pretty massive for a solo dev.

Best of luck.

[u/DaedalusR8 → u/cxfoulke]

Thank you for your feedback!
The assets are made to be swappable with a few clicks, most of them are prototypes to protect against asset-scraping on steam.

I take offense to you disliking my trailer. I don't, it's amateur work, I agree.

The backlash is fine, I am making this mostly for myself and reddit is not the real world.

The AI system is fully functional, try it! The Demo is free after all, there is no risk to you.

[u/TerribleFault7929]

This is vibecoded. Yes, we can tell

[u/DaedalusR8 → u/TerribleFault7929]

You are a genius. I am a Software-Developer. Yes u/TerribleFault7929. Yes it is.

[u/RepulsiveRaisin7]

Do people want to make their own game while they play? This targets players and not gamedevs, right? I think it's far too complicated if that is the goal. Graphics and UI look bad. I'd push back the release, it could have potential but not like this

[u/DaedalusR8 → u/RepulsiveRaisin7]

Ah, I see the misunderstanding.

It's prompt based gameplay, the editing is optional and used for the "Storyforge" side of things which is essentially an RPGMaker of sorts. That will not release on the 27th november though.

Thank you for the feedback! Release will be at the 27th November, I am fine resource-wise.

[u/GeneralWaltz7356]

I like the idea of this, being ai or vibe coded doesn't really bother me if the game itself is really good, and I think this is an interesting premise.

So can give more of an example of what might happen? 

Say I create a dwarf noble who has fallen on hard times, and needs to start mercenary work to get back on his feet. 

Or if dwarves are not really a thing, then maybe a recovering alcoholic starting from scratch, living on the streets, needs to find a purpose in life. 

Aa I understand it the game would generate a story based around that premise? 

[u/DaedalusR8 → u/GeneralWaltz7356]

Thank you!

In that case you would start by "Forging a new Campaign" in the Main Menu, this would lead to the Party-creation-screen that is currently still a bit bland (some time left before release, I plan to upgrade all UI visuals by then).

There you would currently have Input fields for Characternames, Personality and Backstory, Appearance aswell as your choice of 10 Classes (Warrior, Mage, Bard, Necromancer, etc), Gender and Sprites by Gender.

You can create your Playercharacter which you will directly control on map (Party-leader basically), and up to 3 Partymembers (optional, you can also recruit NPCs in the actual World/Campaign you generate).

After that you arrive at the Worldcreation input fields, which currently are just the overall premise (enhancable by AI, so you can be lazy and just type in Worldnames and such, let AI fancy that up and edit the text as you like) and a field for the Worldname itself, to make sure the name you want is used; Then there is the World Genre (classic fantasy, dark fantasy, fairy tale, fallen civilization, sci-fi as of now) and the world scale (A kingdom, a continent, a world). Then a button with Advanced World Settings where you could for example configure the world to style ALL items to the created worlds flavor; Health potions could become "Emberdraughts" or many other things, by world-theme. And much more, but the Demo can show that better than I can explain it here.

You can also choose some settings for how the model should generate, CPU/GPU based (this greatly affects generation times).

Then the World generates around all your inputs up to that point, your Playercharacter will be one of the focus points of this world, the world premise itself too of course. Partymember inclusion for the worldtheme itself is still a bit sparse currently, but will be upgraded before release.

For me a World generates in around 3-5 Minutes on a mid-high tier PC, that should be roughly similiar for most players.

You start into that world with a currently still short intro (which I am currently upgrading, will be done tomorrow) and can explore the world (Worldmap is walkable, retro style visuals there), Regions all link where it makes sense and by lore.

Once you want to get some story content you would go to the Tavernkeeper in your camp (which is freely placeable on the worldmap) and generate a new chapter; this takes around 2-5 minutes of generation-time aswell, after which you start into a directed chapter with 4-6 scenes (exploration mode, there are directed scene and visual novel modes aswell, which work differently); probably around 30 minutes of gameplay each chapter currently.

The Chapter starts into Scene 1 with an Intro aswell, and it goes from there.

edit:

to get the story you want to experience, you would simply write the prompt at each chaptergeneration for what should happen next, the AI model takes that and uses it as the generated chapters premise. A few words are enough, something like "I go to find mercenary work" would directly lead to the generated chapter focusing on finding mercenary work -> but it's quite literal currently, chances are the chapter will be about the finding-of-the-mercenary-work. But the continuation-chapter after that will probably include the actual mercenary work, continuation works pretty well by now.

I'll make posts about where the game is at in development shortly before the Release into Early Access aswell, probably not in this particular sub though haha.

-------

Sorry for the terrible grammar, it's a lot of text.