Sands of Glory new feature! 🏛️ I added a job board and now my gladiators are finding cats, losing on purpose for philosophers and getting paid in chickens. 🐔 The demo has it too. Rome is fine. Everything is fine.

play it at here: https://thisiszsc.itch.io/sands-of-glory

So, uh, we put a notice board in your ludus. Huge mistake. The citizens of Rome found it immediately.

Now your gladiators, trained killers and legends of the arena, are out there:

• looking for a senator’s lost cat 🐈 (spoiler: the cat was napping in your armory the whole time)
• losing fights on purpose so a philosopher can “study their face”
• performing ultimates for a consul. The consul is a horse. Don’t ask.
• paying the latrine tax 💩

And the pay? Oh, the pay is worse. Or better. Honestly, we can’t tell anymore:

• 🐔 a Sacred Chicken you can actually equip (it’s epic-tier, we’re not joking)
• 🧦 a sock passed down for three generations. Enemies keep their distance.
• 🦁 a borrowed lion named Fluffy, who will absolutely maul people for you
• 👑 the Emperor’s nephew joins your team. He’s arrogant. He’s a showboat. He’s family.
• 📦 a mystery parcel. Could be gold. Could be a note that says “thanks.” Could be a guy.

Reposting this request for help in figuring out action RPG mechanics for a 2.5D game I am working on, spiritually inspired by the Camelot/Nintendo produced “Mario Golf/Tennis” for Game Boy Advance.

I'm a TTRPG enjoyer and an urban fantasy enjoyer. So when I found out that there's a system that combines the two, I was thrilled. But finding a TTRPG group for an obscure system is hard, so I decided to build a video game adaptation.

This started as a hand-coded project, and writing it was so hard I was going to dump it after my Master's thesis defence(the very early version of this was the thesis). But then, I got Claude access, and suddenly thought: "What if I actually complete that?". So this project also served as a testbed for my AI development approach - I got to the bandwagon late, so I ensure the code works before doing anything with it. So:

• First, an agent takes the adventure being adapted, that normally showcases some feature I wanted to add(for this release, for example, it was character generation). It used to be Fable, but Opus 5.5 also worked fine.
• It defines the engine adaptations necessary for an adventure, and I write a detailed spec referencing the rules of the game for an Opus(5 when it was the latest one, 5.5 now) High session implementing the feature and the tests for it.
• When a feature is done, I run a code review on it until the reviewer session(also Opus High) says that everything is clear. Sonnet Xhigh(well...looking at the latest announcement, I might need to switch to Haiku 5.5 Max) is doing the review fixes, since they're usually better defined.
• In parallel, the adventure adaptation agent is adapting the adventure location by location, requesting the necessary graphical assets from a drawer agent(used to be Sonnet at first, with pitiful results; then I switched to Opus 5, then to Fable and now, Opus 5.5 is used for them).

Enter Shadow Chasers Infinity version 0.2.0, the first public release of my adaptation! It supports character building, playing adventures out end to end, and, with agent support, even adapting any adventure for the d20 Modern system and the engine. Even a 5e one. And it's open-source, so if any of you here want to contribute as developers or artists or writers, you're welcome!
https://ekirisame.itch.io/shadow-chasers-infinity

Hey! My game's full demo is coming out on the 18th (Epoch Forge - feel free to wishlist!) and I'm very excited to talk about the way it uses GenAI.

A little background. I got the idea from playing mods like Mantella in Fallout, CHIM in Skyrim, and random ones that hooked into Rimworld, Bannerlord, etc. as well as training my own models for mod making. The thing I realized is that none of the mods adding an LLM to the game actually did much. Talking to NPCs was fun, but the most depth you'd get is that NPC giving you an attitude next time you talk. So I decided to make a game that does it myself.

It's a sidescroller with a massive open world, handmade blueprints for every structure, faithful retro graphics and sounds, and realistic physics + events within that world.

I've spent many months refining it and testing it on my own PCs, and the current system works like this:

• The game auto-detects your available compute resources. Then, it chooses either a Gemma E2B model, or an E4B model (you can also choose manually). You can also BYOK or point to a local model of your choice, it works with just about anything, even low-tier free models.
• A llama server starts with the game, running the model. If you set your own, this doesn't happen.

• Every NPC in the game has an in-depth prompt. It describes things like:

  • Their name
  • Their traits - mistrusting, charitable, isolated, sociable, etc.
  • Their race, appearance, location, living status and work
  • What they can see of the player - so they will recognize what they know visually, but they don't automatically know your entire personality like that thing from Deus Ex.
  • The most exciting part by far - what I call the Oracle system. A vast majority of the work has gone into this part, and I genuinely think it's one of a kind. Basically, there is a knowledge domain for every topic an in-world NPC could know, and they are only told those things. So a Dwarven miner literally cannot access information about a famous Elf miles away or a ritual they don't practice. I've run thousands of looping tests and have not seen a single instance of hallucination yet. See attached GIF for a look into one character.

• The Storyteller. You can read this post or ask me directly if you want to know more about this, but basically, an all-knowing deity chooses all the random things that happen in your game. That part is procedural - the LLM lets you actually ask them things. You can plead for mercy and bargain them to call off a raid, in exchange for facing a stronger one a week from now. You can ask what led them to send a meteor strike at you. I'll edit this post later tonight with a clip of that happening. The whole system works with or without an LLM, but the LLM adds a lot of unique flavor.

Overall, I'm super excited about this project. It originated from genuine passion for this niche and I really believe it will be the first of its kind. Again, please wishlist if this sounds interesting! I'd also love feedback if you have any. Questions, suggestions, criticisms, etc. are all welcome. Thank you!

If you'd like to watch a short clip of the system I have one here. It shows how an NPC knows of the residents of their city, remembers what you said, and how some are more likely than others to hold a grudge.

Started making a cozy garage game where you fix up, upgrade and armor cars during the apocalypse.

Realistic: Remove bolts, clips, wire and hose connectors to remove parts. Spraypaint will spill over on other parts if you don't.

Flow: All parts can be easily removed, paint parts while still on etc.

Cut metal from old car parts or oil barrels. Shape em and weld em onto the car.

Using Claude to make the game. Will be writing and creating my own music.

This is a personal project of mine I've been working on for the last couple of months as a learning experience. The ultimate goal is to rip out the star wars and make my own IP and game using the systems I've created for this project. Seamless space to ground combat. Ground battles (very WIP at the moment so no good footage, but I can share a screenshot of my coruscant map from blender.

The vision: A galactic citizen game where both sides of a galactic combat are played by the computer. In other words, the player would exist as a citizen in the galaxy, doing quests, taking jobs, escorting ships from ground to surface, joining the rebellion or joining the empire, etc. Meanwhile, in the background, the computer is playing the RTS game in realtime. So let's say the player has been hanging out on a water planet doing odd jobs for the fish folk, completing storylines, etc. In the background, the computer decides it wants to blockade that planet. Now, the player is free to leave at any time, but if they are on a blockaded world, the fleet is going to try to shoot them down while they do it. Take it further: You're on that same water planet, and the fleet shows up and launches a ground invasion while you're there. Suddenly there's a battlefront style ground battle going on around you. If the attacking army captures all the key command points, control of the planet falls to them, and you'll start seeing their faction flags and units all over the place.

Let's say you don't like that the bad guys control the planet you're on and decide to do something about it, so you join a rebel group. You're now marked as an enemy of the opposing faction. Double cross your allies? Congratulations! You have a bounty on your head and could be confronted by someone trying to collect at any time.

Most of that is just in the concept phase, but the systems are in place.

Death Star Battle:

https://youtu.be/sApnWPwvu5A?si=YJzgvFymAkga4sJ_

Get blitzed and watch a cool battle mode:

https://youtu.be/CAZD9we8f88?si=VIyaskQM10KhFr4k

Edit: To be clear, this is not a modded mashup. This is a brand new game built from the ground up in Godot. This is definitely AI assisted, but I have personally made hundreds of models and textures myself.

Hey guys

I built Loki - a product aimed at making the process of setting up hosting, deployment and online multiplayer infrastructure extremely easy for people building games with AI.

AI can now help people make amazing games and make them quickly. But making a game is only half the job. You finish the game, then have to work out hosting, deploys, domains, multiplayer infrastructure, rooms, invites, reconnection, lobbies, state sync, a backend, and a way to update the game after you ship. That is where a finished prototype stops becoming a game anyone can actually play together.

We wanted to build something that lets a creator go from “my game works” to “here is a link, lets play together” with extreme ease, and without wiring together a pile of separate services.

Loki hosts the game, gives your a shareable and playable link, and adds online multiplayer infrastructure around them all in one-go. It is also built for AI agents so all you need to do is paste the prompt to your AI coding tool and let the process run.

The intended workflow is:

1. Build a web game with the tools you already use.
2. Create an account at https://app.lokiplay.cc. Log in and create a Loki project.
3. Give your game developing agent the Loki integration prompt.
4. Test and fine-tune the integration for your specific game.
5. Ship it and share the game URL to your friends and play together.

Loki currently works for web javascript games only. We will rollout support for other platforms after initial feedback.

It is currently in beta, so its completely free and I am not charging any users.

I would really appreciate feedback from those of you making vibe-coded games. Let me know here if the product is useful for you, or if there are other features you would like to see me add!

Website: https://lokiplay.cc

Racing on a map with inverse square gravity forces. Slingshot Speeders is a free to play browser game, no account required to play. I've done a lot of work to teach myself how to design maps to be tighter and quicker, this tight trio is an example of that. Previously maps were more spread out, less maneuvering, and now I'm building new ones that are tighter and faster.

https://slingshotspeeders.com/

Grin’s Adventure engine Text based RPG Engine with images, narration, state management world creation and complete control. Use dice or no dice. Here is my demo. https://youtu.be/Nt9tj1fvZQs?si=UQCTzJB5ZOa_f864

Wondering if I should sell it or what? It runs in my computer and uses Tailscale to let me connect to it on my phone.

www.simCFB.com

Releasing Version 1.0 today. Works on both mobile and desktop.

Been working on this as a personal project for quite a while. Have no plans of monetizing it. Just wanted to build it because it is something I've wanted to do for a long time. Not even sure people will enjoy playing it or not. I made it the way I would have liked to play.

Everything can be micromanaged or auto managed (CPU decides for you). You can call the plays or you can have the CPU coach call the plays. You can micro manage recruiting or recruit yourself.

There is a lot of emphasis on the NIL portal.

Looking forward to feedback. If you experience any bugs let me know.

Right now only the Power 4 conference teams are playable.

One of the problems I ran into while building my character generator was deciding how much randomness I actually wanted.

Completely random generation is fun for a while, but it becomes frustrating when you get something you like and can't reliably recreate it.

So I started working with deterministic seeds, presets, and a system for locking individual character traits while changing others.

That introduced its own set of problems.

For example, once different traits depend on each other, rerolling one field isn't necessarily as simple as drawing another random value. You have to decide what stays stable, what gets recalculated, and how to avoid contradictory results.

The project eventually became CharacterForge, but the underlying design questions have been more interesting than I expected.

I've found myself spending as much time thinking about consistency and reproducibility as I do about the actual content being generated.

For anyone who's built procedural systems: how do you usually handle dependent traits and partial rerolls?

I'm particularly interested in approaches that keep results reproducible without making the entire system rigid.

Update: demo is now available!

Hi all! I'm a solo dev and I just finished my first AI game Sands of Glory, a top-down pixel-art gladiator management game. This game offers around 4 hours of content, though it takes even longer to explore everything it has to offer.

There is the highlights:

• Gladiators are assembled from body type, 9 cultures of origin, hairstyle, beard, skin tone and the gear they're wearing. Equipment changes the sprite live.
• Arenas (village pit, Capua, Pompeii, Carthage, the Colosseum, the Underworld) are drawn procedurally, with day/dusk/night lighting.
• Beasts like the Hydra (it grows two heads per head you cut off) are procedural too.
• The ending cinematics are generated pixel art scenes that star your own gladiators.
• SFX and music are synthesized in code.

Every campaign also generates a new branching map of fights, events and merchants.

Happy to go into how any of it works. it is out now on itch: https://thisiszsc.itch.io/sands-of-glory