AI Roguelite

This is an interesting experiment. The engine is extremely capable in a great many ways, and it is extremely easy to give a scenario to the prompt and a whole world is created. This is particularly intersting when you task the engine with recreating a scenario (I tried being a cook on the Edmund Fitzgerald and another where I was a warrior of the Dakota tribe in the US/Dakota war 1862). While my experimentation is limited here, I have no doubt of the engine's capability to create and deliver fantastical settings.
As the player, you are able to attempt to do anything and only the logic of the world that has been created by the system will limit your actions.
But it's not all roses here. It's heavily LLM-based, and the kind of issues that arrive with LLM-based solutions also appear here. For example, places are created but they do not logically interconnect - they're just created. Quests are created as a means to drive the plot forward, but the LLM doesn't truly care if you've completed them or not. The engines "DM" feels a bit like having the attention spam of a squirrel; while my playtime is extremely limited, I have not yet witnessed or played through a scenario where there felt like there was an overarching plot story, just interconnected 'ideas' created on a whim by an LLM that has difficulty peicing the logic together in a humanistic way.
Graphics are created and that's awesome. Yet, the graphics created are 'just a bit off' - like, in the Fitzgerald I was cook, but the galley looked like a house kitchen. Or how seemingly straightforward paths are obscurely hidden in weird ways.
Actions are slow. That is, it takes a noticeable amount of time for the engine to process your action and determine the result. There's a speech-to-text thing that happens and it's cool, but the voices are strange and weirdly paced. Some text is also missing in the presentation.
Some people have obviously had a lot of fun with this tool, and so therefore it goes without saying that some people will very much enjoy the many options that are available to the player. AI Roguelite is literally a pandora's box of quests, but like Pandora's box, once you've opened it you may not really like what's inside.
I recommend this to those select few of us who enjoy text adventure games, are extremely creative, patient with plot holes (think swiss cheese), and enjoy tinkering with their game systems. AI Roguelike provides players with an uncanny ability to experience all manner of RPG worlds, but unfortunatley it also provides players with an uncanny valley of human expectation.

I am addicted. If you ever loved Choose Your Own Adventures books, Tabletop Roleplaying, or 'The Neverending Story', you'll probably like this game. Any bugs with the program itself, the developer seems to fix right away.

The only real issues I have run in to are not with the game itself, but the limitations of AI technology, such as AI having no long term memory to speak of. That being said, I play with the AI that is default and free use, but it seems very customizable, even allowing connecting to high quality paid models.

I highly recommend getting this if you are even remotely interested in the idea.

This is more of a cautious recommendation. As a game, it's fun yet frustrating. Most of my issues with the game stem from the AI being an AI, I don't blame the dev for the majority of the stuff. For context, I had the 15$ optional subscription while playing the game. It makes the AI think faster but I didn't notice a huge quality increase in the story compared to the non-subscriber experience. While I bring up a lot more negatives than positives, I'd still recommend the game for people who like messing with AI stuff. It was worth the money for me.
THE GOOD
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1. Freedom
You can be pretty much anything you want and create a world fit for your characters. Some of the characters I've been include a fallen god, a wuxia healer, a regular highschooler and an incubus. The world and NPC characters inhabiting it will react appropriately to your backstory and the powers you wield, making for a fun roleplaying experience.
2. Crafting
In the game, you can find a variety of randomly generated items by searching an area, harvesting gathering points, opening containers or as rewards from NPCs or trading with them. Any item can be combined with anything, and the results will vary depending on the ingredients. Using three items of the same quality will guarantee that the result is one tier higher. You can also specify what you wish to create, though the result will depend on the crafting station you're using and your ingredients. It's very fun, and when you're kitted out in full legendary gear you'll feel like a god.
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THE BAD
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1. The Companions
While an interesting idea, your companion's main purpose seems to be to constantly berate you. When you inevitably fail roll after roll, they'll call you an idiot, a fool, or a variety of other insults. I'm not joking, this is what they'll spend 90% of their time doing. Also, the affection system seems to have absolutely no impact on the companions or NPCs. They'll still turn heel and attack you at the drop of a hat, even at max relationship levels. Their one positive feature is that they will SOMETIMES help you in combat, but more often than not even if you're playing a backline squishy character you'll be the one to take all of the damage. My only actually good companion has been my fallen god's sentient sword. He didn't complain or berate me at all turns, he actually encouraged me and helped me out in combat numerous times. (I believe part of the reason is that my fallen god character is incredibly OP and he can't fail many rolls, so it doesn't cause reasons for my sword to complain.)
2. The combat
There are two levels of power for your character. Either you're beyond weak, or you're godlike who can't die to anything(not really, but we'll get to that). Starting out, it'll be very hard to best anything in combat and you'll be relying in your one single skill you start out with to deal damage or charm the enemy. Unless you get a lucky crit and instakill your enemy, the damage you take builds up and eventually leads to your death, or knock you out if you aren't playing with permadeath on.
3. Healing
As I mentioned, you'll be getting damaged in and out of combat very frequently. This is where healing would come in handy. Problem is, it's incredibly inconsistent. Any food items or bandages and such that should heal you might damage you instead if you fail the roll. If you have a healing skill(I heavily recommend this), you'll fare better. Another huge issue is that sometimes, even if you beat the roll, you just won't get ANY health back. The story output states that you succeeded and healed yourself, but your actual health bar won't move up at all.
4. Death loops
When you get knocked out, you'll usually wake up in a completely different location. Your enemies might have captured you or a passing stranger decided to help you out. No matter what the case is, sometimes you'll take damage again from some random idiocy right after waking up. Every turn, something completely random will make you lose health. Fail a roll to ask for help? The guy you asked got mad and shoved you, bruising your shoulder. And now you're dead again. You wake up in ANOTHER completely random place and get to repeat the process all over again. It's possible to escape this damage loop but the fact that it happens is still incredibly annoying.
5. The constant action
The AI has one concept: to drive the story forward no matter what and constantly bring action to the player. No matter where you go or what you do, inevitably some creature will stalk you and emerge from the shadows. You'll constantly be getting chased by enemies, and the AI loves to invent absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reasons for people to want to hunt you in the first place. Oh, you picked up a broken piece of glass from the floor? That was actually the shard of an incredibly important artifact and now you've got an entire faction after you. The peak example of this is when I cleared out an outpost and took it over for myself. I was intending on rebuilding the place and make it my base, but the AI does not like that. Wave after wave of convoys of enemies began arriving on the scene. No matter how many I put down, my companion would inevitably say "Oh no, I can hear the roar of engines approach!" These enemies are skyrim bandit tier dumbasses. Oh, that guy that single handedly just massacred a few armies by himself? Let's assault his camp! Peak idiocy. Even when the setting of my story was a completely average high school, the AI just cannot take a story at a casual, normal pace. It didn't take long until I was forced to unearth some corruption scandal involving the principal and some of the students. It's tiring, you can't have a moment of peace in this game.
6. Instant deaths
Remember how I mentioned your character is godlike and can't die? Well, you actually can. In fact, the AI can decide to kill you instantly with no way to save yourself. It's as if your DM from dungeons and dragons decided "oops rocks fall and everyone dies." And it can do so at any time with no warnings. Luckily, this didn't happen too often to me, and I didn't play with permadeath on so it didn't end my run.
7. Inconsistency
The largest problem with the game, and it stems from the fact that you're not actually playing a game and just talking with an AI. Details will constantly be forgotten, and using the same skill twice will never guarantee the same result. Trying to use your healing skill again because the first time didn't restore any health? The AI blocks your action and says it's impossible because "you already healed yourself". Want to leave an area? Nope, you're busy with (♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ quest you already completed 30 turns ago). Another example is when I was playing as a gunslinger, I had an ability called "Fan Hammer" which empties three bullets in quick succession to an enemy. Guess what attributes this ability uses to check if I succeeded? That's right, strength and mechanical repair. Makes total sense. I assume the AI didn't check anything else except the name and thought "Hmm, hammer? Clearly using a hammer on something!" The weird thing is that in the story, my character doesn't hammer anything and actually shoots his revolver..
8. Status bars
They suck. That's it. They don't enhance your experience in any way and they're a constant annoyance you have no way of dealing with. Even at their optimal values, they don't do anything to aid you, only hinder you if they're at minimal values(and they'll usually be locked at minimal values because ways of increasing them are almost nonexistent). The only saving grace is that you can disable status bars on world creation.
9. Names
A very minor gripe but an annoying thing nonetheless. If you've played this game, the names 'Hollow', 'Maw' and 'Iron' should be pretty familiar by now. In every game you play, no matter what scenario, factions and locations will use these same naming patterns.. Over, and over, and over, and over again.

Does AI Roguelite share the same limitations that all LLMs do? Yes. Because it uses LLMs.
Is AI Roguelite getting better as those limitations are being smoothed out over time? Yes. Because LLMs are getting better.
Do you have to pay to get the most out of the experience? Maybe. It depends on what you want. If you are looking for a sizable adventure with chapters of lore, you will either have to fork over some money to get the higher context token tiers, or use an alternative LLM host, which the game allows for. If you are looking for shorter "one shot" kinds of adventures, the free model works just fine.
So why not use an LLM directly? This provides a good framework for creating and retaining Items, NPCs, Quests, and stats that are kept in memory and are track-able, affecting the gameplay and storytelling. Anyone who has messed around with LLM's directly to run adventures knows that it requires a lot of babysitting to keep it from forgetting any of those things as the game progresses. AI Roguelite requires far less, if any, babysitting because of the way it tracks those elements.
Ai Roguelite also uses a roll-system to determine plausibility and success of actions, that have varying affects on how the game/story progresses based on the level of success or failure, so there is granularity and gameplay involved similar to a traditional game.
Are there areas the game can improve? Absolutely.
- I would like to see the stat system be less about how they generally affect rolls and instead directly impact the context. For instance, if I have a very strong character, stat wise, I would like the gameworld to recognize that and react accordingly at appropriate times.
- I would like to see more traditional game systems integrated into the AI that affects how the storytelling adventure progresses, like time, weather, etc.
- I would like a more coherent world map that doesn't use themed "threat zones" as regions for all the locations to be spawned in. Something graphical that shows forests, mountains, oceans, rivers etc and has locations that make sense. As it is now, it is just region blobs that fit a theme.
I want to be clear that the above areas of improvement are a wish list, not some "The game sucks if it doesn't have these" demand. I'm well aware of the current limitations of AI, and that the dev is one person, and that this game is still a WIP. I still recommend it to anyone who doesn't have an axe to grind against AI in general and who sees the potential that AI can have in the future of games.

I have purchased this in December, 2022. Honestly, it is rather an interesting experiment demonstrating AI capabilities.
It has been a long way since 2022. Previously my attempts were unsuccessful because of AI silliness, but it was fascinating to see a slow progress, both in terms of this game, and in terms of AI in general.
Right now though I have tried to use GPT-4o and this is giving extremely promising results. Now it can memorize the plot much better, the characters make sense, the encounters as well. But this still remains only an experiment, I would not bother to have a "complete run" here.
Let me explain a bit what are the current drawbacks as of 2025 (just my opinion, maybe everyone else is happy):
The Structure
The game is a prisoner of it's own restrictions. The structure of levels, quests, maps, actions will be always the same. You will have different stories, different plots, but the way you play will be always limited to the same template, which was here in 2022. I believe that it made 100% sense previously and kept foolish AI in chains. But right now? I think that AI should be capable of not only thinking about the plot, but also DESIGN the whole gameplay flow.
For example, I can imagine giving AI a set of tools it can use to create the game. Quests do not have to be always three-part, storylines can intersect, characters can have it's own story as a side-quest, either small or big. There are side-quests, and there could be a sub-quests as well. My idea: the structure can be dynamic, and it applies to everything.
The Randomness (or "No Journey")
As far as I understand, the story is completely written by the player. Yes, it introduces freedom. But it lacks the meaning, unless player defines it himself. AI is capable of generating not only the beginning of the story / quest / side-quest, but a skeleton of it, which makes sense from the story-telling perspective (with a focus on emotions, development of the character, conflicts, motivation and so on). There would be still randomness, uniqueness of each play-through, but also a meaning. The story could just hint a player in a right direction for a great story to unfold.
There are materials on "How to Become a Better Writer" topic, and those materials are just instructions on what to do to create a great story. There are fundamental blocks, which will serve as a great guide for AI. Quick example would be sharing with AI the concepts and ideas of conflicts, emotion wounds, fears, traits, traumas, motivations, skills and talents, or physical features. Not as a separate blocks - AI can do that, but as an instruction to create a meaningful story.
For example, let's say that the quest's conflict is "Having to blindly trust someone" with a detailed prompt on how to write such questline in a meaningful way. It can give the player some meaning. This leads to endless, yet meaningful possibilities to explore the story and the character. An independent character having to accept help from others. Having to be comfortable with never having all the information. Replacing a bad situation for a worse one. Being found by people the character was trying to avoid. Others being harmed because the character chose to trust the wrong person. All of these are the logical possibilities that will make player actually care.
AI is not great in seeing a bigger picture if we don't guide it properly.
The Creativity
AI would generate great stories. But those will be always same. For example, I choose cyberpunk setting - what do I get? Hack the servers of the enemy. Always. Everything would be about hacking. You see - the issue with it is AI taking the most probable output. There would be lack of something unusual. Yes, in early days it was rather great. But is it the limit today?
The players themselves can lead the story to be creative, yes, but can we make it by default? Well... Creativity is an algorithm.
There is a thing called Osborn's Checklist. The best way would be to use this checklist on a regular ideas that AI generates. And try to modify those ideas in different ways - adapting, magnifying, rearranging, reversing, substituting things will give something unique, not boring and yet coherent results.
Conclusion
This game is right now stable, capable of generating great stories that make sense. But everything will have the AI-generated vibe to it, and player is responsible for moving the things forward. But player should not be a designer. Player should not be a writer.
AI creates decorations, player shapes the world. But AI should be creating the world that will shape the player.
Will definitely return to this game later.

A unique game in its genre. I recommend everyone to buy it!
I would also like to ask the developers to implement three simple suggestions:
1. Rare relationship statuses with NPCs and companions: not just numbers up to 15, but rare statuses, for example: ‘blood enemy’, ‘traitor’, ‘best friend’, “lover”, ‘spouse’ and so on.
2. The ability to create NPCs and companions for the starting location at the beginning (in the new game generation window), as can be done with inventory items and other things.
3. “Bring the world to life” with a random check once per game week, where some characters randomly receive certain goals and begin to “wander around”, performing some actions once a week. Of course, the player is NOT notified of this, so as not to overload them with text. These are hidden actions of NPCs from other locations around the world.
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Уникальная игра в своём жанре. Всем советую к покупке!
Также, хотелось бы попросить разработчиков реализовать 3 лёгких предложения:
1. Редкий статус отношений with NPCs and companions: not just numbers up to 15, but rare statuses, for example: "blood enemy", "предатель", "best friend", "lover", "spouse" and so on.
2. Возможность на старте создавать NPC и компаньонов для стартовой локации (в окне генерации новой игры), как это можно делать с предметами инвентаря и другими вещами.
3. "Оживить мир" рандомной проверкой раз в игровую неделю, где рандомно некоторые персонажи получают определённые цели и начинают "скитаться", раз в неделю совершая какие-либо действия. Игрока, конечно, об этом НЕ извещают, чтобы не засорять текстом. Это скрытые действия NPC из других локаций по всему миру.

Holy MOLY is this fun!

Turn off TTS, in its current form, its super annoying ... that is the end of my critique of this game.

The crafting is actually weirdly intuitive given that its AI generated. For ecample. I had a mechanical bird. I Crafte dit with camera lenses, now i have a mechanical bird with the ability to capture images. I then crafted that with an arcane core, I now have an arcane bird that can capture images then project them later. I then crafted that with the mechanical heart of a long dead titan ... I now have a mechanical bird that can read the pat history of a place by tracing the resonance of the world from the time of creation, enabling it to see into other dimensions .... like I said, intuitive.

And even though it has that good ol' AI tendency to misunderstand what you mean, or to go off on tangents from time to time. Its really good at keeping the actual plotline youre advancing nailed down. Including the fact that you DO NOT need to use the AI assisted quest tracker to complete any given quest. (Which is fair, because its a multiple choice problem which has only one viable anwser and two schitzo decisions). For example, I had a quest to repair a machine. Now, i could just click the quest exclamation mark over and over and that will, in time, finish the quest. Or I can go to the place, ask around for what I need, and fix the machine, and the AI will actually progress and complete the quest intuitively based on your actions.

I've really enjoyed my time with this so far and this will probably be my betwen work toy for a while!