LAIRD

LAIRD is an experimental AI game and ASCII roguelike set in an apocalyptic gaslamp fantasy world. Civilization fell when the Automatons went rogue. Now survivors live on dirigibles above the toxic wasteland, descending into brass-and-iron ruins to scavenge what remains.

Features

- AI-Compiled Skills - The AI writes skill code for your abilities. Same seed and choices = same skills, but every class plays differently.

- Deterministic Generation - Enter a world seed. Share it with friends. Get the same dungeons, enemies, items, and skills.

- Natural Language Input - Type "go north" or just "n". Talk to NPCs. The game understands your intent. For better or worse.

- Points of Intent - Scattered throughout the ruins. Some respond to language in... unexpected ways.

- NG+ - Once you vanquish the evil Automatons, you unlock a feature which a custom world theme.

Who Is This For?

Honestly? AI enthusiasts more than hardcore gamers.

If you want to see what production LLM integration actually looks like in a game - not a chatbot wrapper, but genuine AI-generated executable code with governance - this is a playable proof of concept.

If you remember MUDs, LORD, or classic roguelikes and want to see those loops with again, you'll feel quite at home.

If however, you're looking for the next Caves of Qud or Cogmind, please temper your expectations. This is a solo dev project dedicated to exploring new technology application and the limits of deterministic procedural automation.

The Technical Bit (For the Curious)

LAIRD runs a local llama.cpp LLM (Qwen 3.5) to generate procedural content, skill code, and other game scripts. The download includes the model and llama.cpp server. It can't access your filesystem, make network calls, or do anything outside the game's specifically whitelisted operations. The only network activity is GameAnalytics, and you can opt out of that before any data gets sent.

The same world seed and choices produces the same content every time - dungeons, enemies, items, NPC names, skill implementations. Deterministic AI generation. I like to think of it like a fancy decision tree with nearly infinite nodes.

Minimum Requirements

Gotta recommend at least a 3060.

Content Warning

- Procedurally generated text may occasionally be weird

- Permadeath is real and frequent

- The gaslamp apocalypse is thematically dark (ruined civilization, automaton horrors)

Support / Feedback

This is an alpha release. Things will break. If you find bugs or have feedback: just leave a comment on this page.