Posted November 15, 2025 by Dragynrain
#roguelike #cyberpunk #alpha #turn-based #tactics #ascii #sprites
Enemy movement prediction shows you each enemy's next 3 planned moves - no guessing, pure tactical planning. It's like playing chess against enemies who show their next moves. Use this intel to slip past patrols, set up ambushes, or plan your escape route.
The stealth mechanics are central - you're not meant to fight everything. Hide in blind spots to avoid detection and manage your heat levels carefully. Push your detection too high and the Admin Avatar spawns - a powerful boss with perfect tracking and relentless pursuit.
Heat management from exploit usage and bump attacks adds another resource layer beyond typical HP/mana. Every move counts in this purely skill-based tactical challenge.
The story is told through environmental fragments - 20+ story fragments persist across runs, even death can't erase them. Each run might reveal new pieces of the Project Chimera conspiracy. Permadeath for your character, but persistent narrative discovery means every run brings you closer to the truth.
The game features full audio with atmospheric music and 40+ sound effects, particle effect explosions for enemy death, and complete keyboard and mouse support. Track your progress across runs with the Achievement System - unlock challenges and prove your mastery of stealth tactics.
This is alpha 0.8.0 - feature complete and playtested, now looking for wider feedback on:
Bug reporting made easy: Hit Shift+F12 or use Settings > Export Debug Package to create a comprehensive debug report (saves, logs, metrics, system info, screenshot). Makes bug reporting super simple!
Background: I'm a professional software engineer, so this was built with engineering discipline: architecture reviews, code quality standards, and comprehensive automated testing.
This game was built with the assistance of AI tools (Claude Code for code, Stable Diffusion for sprites and images, AudioCraft for SFX), compressing the timeline from probably 6-12+ months to closer to 3 months. I did use some wonderful human-created music for the soundtrack!
I approached this project more like a technical project manager: breaking down requirements, reviewing architecture decisions, curating outputs, and ensuring quality. This is my first project with AI. I definitely learned a lot about coding with AI assistance and how best to use Claude Code and how to maximize my time spent on the fun things like designing game systems!
The reality: I approached asset generation with most of my time spent on quality control - only keeping outputs that fit the game's design vision. Thousands of sprites and images were discarded before settling on the ones I did. AI definitely accelerated the prototyping and iteration cycles, but game design, architecture, balance tuning, and quality standards were all human-driven. The tools amplified my output, but the creative direction is all human.
There's a Graphics Preview option in the main menu that has dozens of sprites I created and lets you preview them together (walls, floors, enemies, player, etc.) to see how well they match, which is how I chose the default sprite set. I'm not a real artist by any means though! If you think you can do choose better from among my sprites send me your set (the previewer will actually save what you have chosen to a log file).
If you are an actual artist or actual sound designer interested in improving the game's polish, I'd love to collaborate. Reach out!
This game is supported by a massive testing infrastructure to alleviate the need for as much manual testing.
I learned so much more about testing methodologies, processes, and patterns building this all out!
Happy to answer any questions about the workflow - what worked, what didn't, where AI helped vs. where it fell short, or anything about the development process. And of course, would love feedback on the game itself!
I feel like the game is way too easy in its current state and I want to ratchet up the difficulty and add an Ascension system and gamepad support. But I also wrote the game and know how all the systems work so of course it feels easy to me! What do you think??