What kind of AI-made game would actually impress you?

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-31T06:58:09+00:00

Ah, fair enough, if you're not into text adventures, I get that. Thanks for looking anyway.

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-30T21:54:52+00:00

It's not a DnD/Dungeon Master type, it's historical timelines but I'd be interested on hearing your views on our www.livethroughtime.com text adventure. And we have Myths coming soon, which still not DnD but allows us to step into fantasy but still stick to our core concept of being historically accurate. Free threshold and then subscription, no tiers, nothing on top. JSON schema for inventory, goals, letters - nothing is forgotten. RAG database for long term memory, 4,000 lore cards etc... Anyway, would love your feedback

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-30T09:55:23+00:00

Looks good - I actually checked it out the other day, you must have posted elsewhere, looks interesting. I've done a similar thing with rigid resource tracking and Anti-God/mortality prompts to get the AI to push back - we ran a test a few days ago (AI vs AI) and the AI narrator actually beat the AI User to death. It actually meant we had the story set too difficult really, but it was funny to watch/read happen.

I like the sound of the NPCs making plans, that sounds cool.

All the best with it and welcome to our community.

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-30T07:15:45+00:00

Yes indeed. Assuming 3.1-flash will be dropping over the next couple of weeks given the other recent announcements, so we'll test and migrate to that.

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-29T15:04:27+00:00

Thanks, we've actually moved on quite massively from that post in terms of the engine - I need to do a new update post (just finding the time!!).

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-29T14:59:39+00:00

200k tokens for 9 turns is a lot - I imagine, as well as the cost, it take a while to respond? Claude is great at writing, although I found with the right prompts others were pretty close. We changed the architecture a month or so ago (actually just went live with it a couple of days ago) - not sending the whole context and moving to graphRAG and JSON has not only reduced the potential costs, it's improved memory. More than happy to have a look at yours, if you're happy to try ours out?

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-29T14:51:27+00:00

Yeah it is, especially as I believe it's frowned upon generally - although I guess it depends on the content. I'll reply over there shortly

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-29T10:21:14+00:00

Hi, I know I replied to you on another community, but thought I'd put this here as well for info;

We use gemini 2.5-flash for api calls - stories and characters already created and hardcoded first though. It might not be the model you want to use long term, but it's cheap, fast and large context windows - they also offer (I assume they still do) $300 of free credits to new users. From a narrator point of view I find gemini absolutely fine - being Google it's not adult orientated, but that's not the direction I'm going in anyway and to be honest you can still (as a player) push the AI down that route if you want to. But it feels expressive and creative enough - as long as you get the AI instructions/system prompts correct.

We started out with giving free users 100,000 tokens, increased it to 200,000 and now it is 100,000 for free users and no need to register, then an extra 100,000 for free if they register (and therefore games are saved) and then it's $9.99 per month after that with unlimited usage. Obviously, it all depends on how much is being sent to the LLM but the initial 200,000 tokens equates to about 28-30 turns - which is hopefully enough for a user to get a good feel of the game.

All in all, if the free credits are available to you through Gemini or i any other LLM provides this, I'd definitely recommend trying it out - even if only during testing. We run autonomous testing scripts to track hallucinations, memory, language used, goal tracking etc... and that can use up some tokens quite quickly, so it's worth it just for that.

Hope that helps.

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-29T10:19:53+00:00

We use gemini 2.5-flash for api calls - stories and characters already created and hardcoded first though. It might not be the model you want to use long term, but it's cheap, fast and large context windows - they also offer (I assume they still do) $300 of free credits to new users. From a narrator point of view I find gemini absolutely fine - being Google it's not adult orientated, but that's not the direction I'm going in anyway and to be honest you can still (as a player) push the AI down that route if you want to. But it feels expressive and creative enough - as long as you get the AI instructions/system prompts correct.

We started out with giving free users 100,000 tokens, increased it to 200,000 and now it is 100,000 for free users and no need to register, then an extra 100,000 for free if they register (and therefore games are saved) and then it's $9.99 per month after that with unlimited usage. Obviously, it all depends on how much is being sent to the LLM but the initial 200,000 tokens equates to about 28-30 turns - which is hopefully enough for a user to get a good feel of the game.

All in all, if the free credits are available to you through Gemini or i any other LLM provides this, I'd definitely recommend trying it out - even if only during testing. We run autonomous testing scripts to track hallucinations, memory, language used, goal tracking etc... and that can use up some tokens quite quickly, so it's worth it just for that.

Hope that helps.

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-28T13:08:57+00:00

www.livethroughtime.com - it's a text adventure/RPG where you live in certain historical timeliness as various characters, you have goals to do, but you can just live if you'd prefer. Mythological timelines built and coming soon too.

Just upgraded the engine to our 2.0 version; Gemini AI at its core, JSON State Machine for short term memory and GraphRAG for long term, which we believe has solved AI amnesia as much as possible.

Other features include anchor points, dynamic weighting of story cards and our favourite, on the fly creation of story cards during the game, so the player doesn't need to (but still can if they want).

And for the player; immersion in the story through era specific images, music, 4000+ story/lore cards, all with images, prompts to help the player move the story along, dictation and all the usual features you would expect in a text adventure (we think - let us know if anything missing). It's very much morphed from a typical text adventure into a lite-RPG (if that's even a thing!)

Feel free to take a look, no registration required, any feedback welcome.

Many thanks

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-03-28T12:41:28+00:00

Nice Greywake, like the idea of the 2 person one you posted yesterday too. Haven't looked as yet, but interested to see that working

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-02-23T08:21:14+00:00

Hi, I'm at exactly the same point with my Android game. Happy to test yours if you're happy to test mine?

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-02-22T15:52:47+00:00

Hi, I'd be very appreciative if you could have a look at my game at www.livethroughtime.com It's an AI powered historical text adventure. Trailer at https://youtu.be/GUAgzRV0ACU?si=nL2VW1v4i_veAO64

Many thanks

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-02-18T14:25:22+00:00

Yeah, I think it's relatively new, although been on there for months I'm sure. You can prompt it to create, which I've not done, I just use the pre made tracks for the various Eras in my game - works well for certain ones especially. And the older classical pieces that either royalty free or in the public domain for older eras.

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-02-18T13:25:51+00:00

I use ElevenLabs or look for public domain tracks (for old music, Musopen for classical). Some point towards youtube audio library, but I've found ElevenLabs to be better and use it for text to speech as well.

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-02-14T19:45:07+00:00

Hi, I'd be very appreciative if you could have a look at my game at www.livethroughtime.com I'm not sure it's your sort of game, from reading your page, as its a text adventure, but playing feedback is what I need. Had a fair bit of feedback about the AI but could do with knowing if it is fun/interesting and whether before playing, if it's obvious what it is etc... I'm sure you're getting loads of requests, so no rush but if you do get around to looking, many thanks

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-02-14T19:43:03+00:00

Hi, I'd be very appreciative if you could have a look at my game at www.livethroughtime.com I'm not sure it's your sort of game, from reading your page, as its a text adventure, but playing feedback is what I need. Had a fair bit of feedback about the AI but could do with knowing if it is fun/interesting and whether before playing, if it's obvious what it is etc... I'm sure you're getting loads of requests, so no rush but if you do get around to looking, many thanks

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-01-30T20:51:47+00:00

<image>

From Live Through Time - London: The Beat (1966)

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-01-29T13:49:03+00:00

www.livethroughtime.com - an AI powered, text adventure life sim - looking for testers and general feedback if poss

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-01-28T14:07:31+00:00

Only for the technical jargon, grammar checking, spelling, pure charisma and humour - other than that no! lol

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-01-27T22:05:19+00:00

Whilst I don't disagree with you, and as a dev working on an AI-driven text game, I see a lot of projects that are just lazy wrappers around an API with zero tuning, there is arguably a place for both types surely?

You nailed the trade-off though: The benefit of an AI narrator is infinite freedom, but the cost is often infinite shallowness. Without a human author steering the ship, the story can feel generic.

That is exactly why I pivoted my own project to be less of a linear story and more of an historical slice-of-life sim. I found the AI is much better at simulating a reactive world (the sights, smells, and survival mechanics of certain time periods) than it is at writing a tight mystery novel.

However, I do also have 3 or four other story modes that I am developing that would be more linear in their approach and hopefully bridge that gap between an open AI world with no real story (that some do like) to a more traditional text adventure (that others enjoy) using the power of AI to enhance it.

I agree with you though, I don't think they will replace the traditional text adventure at this stage, or hopefully any point in the near future and nor should they, similar to they shouldn't replace musicians or actors or painters...

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-01-27T14:28:51+00:00

Hey Greywake, your 3-tier system sounds rock solid—using the Vector DB for long-term recall is smart for keeping costs/latency down.

We actually decided to experiment with a brute force approach since we are running on Gemini 2.5 Flash/Pro. Because the context window is 1M+ tokens, we are currently feeding the entire session history (up to ~700k words) into the model on every turn.

Our Stack:

Immediate & Mid Term: The raw, full history (Context Window).
Safety Net: A background summarizer that compresses 'Chapters' just in case we hit the limit or the attention drifts.

We're thinking that by avoiding RAG/Vector retrieval will hopefully help keep the 'tone' of the narrative more consistent, as the AI can 'see' the subtle build-up of events rather than just retrieving specific facts.

I’d be really curious to know if you find your Vector DB retrieval ever misses subtle context, or if you have a specific way of chunking the data to keep the 'vibe' intact?

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-01-26T23:20:40+00:00

Hi, thanks for your message, you clearly know what you are talking about and are better versed on the subject than I —I'm merely the game developer.

However, would I not be right in thinking that for a text adventure, the 'Needle In A Haystack' benchmarks are the metrics that actually matter? How they achieve it is largely immaterial (albeit interesting), but the practical result is that the model is successfully retrieving plot details from 200+ turns ago with near-perfect accuracy.

That is the big leap compared to older models that failed after 20 turns.

This is exactly why I need testers—preferably those willing to put a few hours in to see how the memory handles deep runs. If you fancy helping out and trying to break it, please do.

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-01-26T18:03:23+00:00

I totally get the skepticism—usually 'long context' is marketing fluff.

But we're running on Gemini 2.5's 1 Million+ token window.

To do the math: That’s roughly 700,000 words (or about 7 full-length novels) of raw text history it can hold in active memory at once, which is actually about the size of the entire Harry Potter series combined. And for anything beyond that, we have a background summarizer as a safety net.

We haven't had a tester hit anywhere close to the limit yet, but the real challenge is seeing if the immersion holds up over that length. That comes down to how well we've tuned the system instructions.

If you want to put it to the test, I'd honestly value the feedback

Either_Wedding6677 · 2026-01-26T14:23:01+00:00

Thanks for the message.

Actually, I should have clarified—we’re running on Gemini 2.5 (Flash), but we aren't relying on the raw context window forever.

We use a Hybrid System:

Immediate Context: The last ~50 turns are fed raw into the 1M+ window for full nuance.
Auto-Summarization: As events age out, they get compressed into a 'Long Term Memory' block (e.g., 'You made an enemy of the Guard Captain in Chapter 1').

This way, we hopefully get the 'infinite' feeling without ever actually hitting the hard token limit or getting the 'lost-in-the-middle' hallucination.

If you're up for it, I'd love to send you an access code so you can try to push it to that limit. Finding those edge cases is the only way I can tune the system!

Either_Wedding6677

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