the game is turn based and will have both a graphical mode and a text mode. controls are simple, remappable, and texturally rich. there's native gamepad support. the game has dense, tactical combat, but noncombat playstyles are first class citizens too. healer, merchant, mendicant wanderer...
the world is an ancient one, peopled by many technological species which have complex relationships and histories. there are humans, but also many other species, both natural and made. bodies and selves are more mutable there, the delineation between animal and person which humans cling to blurred.
magic is very much alive and woven through the veins of the land. there are living cities, complex magical ecologies, ancient wells which descend into the depths of the earth. the gods are real, but everyone there is as full of questions as we are.
the world is inspired by a love of biology, history, philosophy, decolonial thought, and queer embodiment.
the game is a huge endeavor, but i have been releasing bite sized interactive demos on patreon as i work so folks can at least catch a glimpse of it along the way! and i have been open sourcing tech and art as i go.
as part of the project, i'm developing a permissive licenced sprite pack for other folks to use in their own games. you can get it here! (new version inbound in the very near future!) lorenschmidt.itch.io/phosphor
i have developed a number of new procedural generation techniques specifically for this game. i gave a talk on some of the techniques i'm using to generate landscapes at this year's roguelike celebration, which you can see here. i'll likely tidy up + open source this soon. youtu.be/FaLUhh_Vfmk?...
Great talk! Thanks for sharing your process. Always inspiring to see other folks map generation techniques. Will definitely be looking into CA approaches in the future!
thank you! i really love the nitty gritty procedural generation talks. i wish i'd had time to go into more details!
I would love to hear the deep dive version of that talk! Look forward to following your progress here on bluesky.
the current status of the project is that world generation is quite robust, and i am moving on to tying it into the generation of local features. i'm doing a first pass on towns and cities right now, and integrating the underground realms i've made will come next!
and i am planning to do a lot of experimental work in the near future, too- ways of integrating generated narrative glosses and techniques drawn from interactive fiction, modes of interaction, abilities, etc.
i'm really excited about doing 10,000 little weird pieces of procedural generation. houses. dialogue. horrible aristocrats. descriptions of clothing. i am going to get back to work, but i hope it's been clarifying!
please feel free to ask any questions you'd like about the project here, and i shall endeavor to answer them! please reply with your question, and specify if it's ok to add it to the main thread so others can see it more easily.
sounds epic and amazing—keep up the great work ✨
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