Project Secret Moth - Blog Posts

infinite potential. We will be able to create at least ten new forms of media each with its own aesthetics and traditions.

Despite the gloomy atmosphere of the 2020s and the 21st century in general, the world of culture is not in danger. It is about to give rise to a new universe.

what is project secret moth?

project secret moth is an LLM-based text adventure with optional visual accompaniment. unlike many other LLM-based text adventures where you can basically do whatever you want and its open ended like a lucid dream, project secret moth has actual game structure built beneath and the LLM simply acts as an interpretative + narrative layer to generate description and cohere the varying game elements. in my schema of game design, things like ai dungeon (with no non-self-imposed win or loss state) or "just open ended chatting with an ai" are "toys", rather than "games". sure, they are fun, and you can make your own fun, but it requires a certain amount of buy-in that always leads me to bounce off of them.

project secret moth does not have that, in the prototype. it is a capital letters Video Game.

project secret moth has the same "win state" as any other yume nikki-like - collect all the effects and leave your bedroom.

the beginning of the game offers two modes - "personal" and "story". personal mode will have the narrative ai ask you psychologically probing questions so that it can customize the dream realms to your psyche. story mode will have it procedurally generate an individual, A Madotsuki, and put you in their shoes.

project secret moth does not have a freeform parser. like the very eldest text adventures, it utilizes verb commands - LOOK AT TORININGEN, USE KNIFE ON UBOA, and so on. there is a certain amount of flexibility - it will try to interpret your actions in a way that a traditional parser never can - but you are not free to do whatever you want. there is no macklankey. you are bound like all living things.

the initial prototype will be text-based only, offering a bedroom, 8 dream worlds (with an indeterminate number of extra layers and sub-areas), minor puzzles, NPCs, and the exciting "environmental cascade" system that allows you to solve area puzzles immersive sim style by manipulating the environment of higher-up layers. order a fan off amazon to make your dream worlds colder.

project secret moth will ship bundled with its own local large language model (the particular one is TBD) and will be built to run on relatively low-spec computers or ones with no GPU available, if possible. no internet connection will be required, and no information you send will be sent to external APIs. when the second prototype (with visual accompaniment system - see the attached images?) launches it will also be bundled with its own fine-tuned image model that, again, will be built to run on low-spec computers.

stay attuned