Living Lore Machine

A closer look at what it is, what is in it, and what I built.

A story for every run

Press Start and an AI narrator picks a location in the world of Ayárin, sometimes a famous one and sometimes an obscure one, and writes a short intro explaining why you are descending into the dark.
It draws on a world document covering the whole continent: the fall of the star-entity Vega, the glassed Amdaraeyn Desert, the dwarven city of Deep Sinig, a forest called The Stranger where time runs wrong, and more.
While you play, the game keeps a journal: every enemy you kill by type, every item you pick up, whether you escaped, and exactly what killed you and with which kind of damage.
When the run ends, a bard turns that journal into a short, dramatic legend of your victory or your fall. Hit Save Lore and it is stored with your score, where other players can open it from the leaderboard with View Lore.

Turning to face a direction is free. Moving, attacking, or using an ability spends your turn, and nothing else moves until you do.
Enemies declare what they are about to do before they do it, so an attack preview or a countdown over an enemy tells you where not to be next turn.
Chasers notice you from up to 12 tiles away and path around walls and other monsters to reach you.
You have five hearts, and resistances mean damage can land in halves.

Every dungeon is built fresh on an 8 by 8 grid of rooms. You start near the middle, one winding path leads out to an exit on the edge, and a second path branches off the other way.
Rooms come from hand-built templates, including wide corridors, T-junctions, crossroads, alcove corridors with cover, and the occasional tight one-tile passage, each rotated to fit.
Enemies and loot are placed at spawn points along both paths, and the room you start in is always kept clear.
Bombs flatten walls, so if the path winds the long way round, you can make your own.

Five damage types - physical, fire, ice, electric, and poison - and every enemy takes more or less from each. The purple area attackers shrug off physical and ice but take double from fire; the shooters resist fire and take double from ice.
Weapons include the Fire Sword, Ice Staff, and Electric Dagger. Abilities include a Fireball projectile and an electric Area Blast that hits everything in a 3x3 square, both on a cooldown.
Fire Shield and Ice Armor halve damage of their element, and a Health Potion restores three hearts.
Bombs sit for three turns and then blow up everything in a 3x3 square, walls included. Hit one with fire and it goes off immediately.
Carry up to 12 items, with six equipment slots: weapon, ability, two utilities, a consumable, and bombs.
Your score is the money you are carrying: Gold Coins are worth 100, Small Gems 500, Large Gems 2,000, and escaping adds a 500 bonus.

Accounts with login, with passwords hashed with Argon2 and then encrypted with a server-side pepper.
A leaderboard of the top 15 runs by money, each with its saved legend.
A home page news feed that admins post to, and admin tools for removing scores from the leaderboard.
A settings page for your display name.

A four-person class final project, built with Ben Smith, Braeden Farley, and Bin Jin between October and December 2025.
I built the dungeon generator and its room templates, the four-phase turn system where every actor declares an intent before anything resolves, the item, element, and inventory systems and the inventory menu, bombs, the three enemy types, and the login and settings pages. By line count, about 60 percent of the final code is mine.
Ben built the grid engine, A* pathfinding, the level editor, and the AI-written run intro. Braeden built the journey tracker and legend generation, the admin news feed and leaderboard tools, and the database models. Bin built lore storage and the leaderboard's View Lore.