I Made A Weird Game that You Can Play or Watch

Since I’m not submitting to literary journals this semester while I figure out AI and my English Composition curriculum, I’ve been tinkering with AI-use. I’ve used it to do all kinds of things: make this website more interesting, experiment with how to use it in my own writing process, and redo my syllabi calendars. A few weeks ago, I wanted to play a game. I wanted a dungeon crawler-simulation game that I could play or watch. After about three days of recursive planning and playing, along with a few different attempts at titles, Charterbound was born.

I didn’t do much of the actual writing of the story of this game. Through the recursive writing process, as I played the game, I decided what went, what to change, and what direction to go next. It took me a few days to realize what I had done: I made a game that I hadn’t played before that I enjoyed so much that it distracted me from grading my students’ papers.

I loved dungeon crawlers and RPGs when I was younger; I played the heck out of Zelda growing up. I also enjoyed simulation games like The Sims and Civilization when I was a teenager. Between college, two terminal degrees, and teaching, I haven’t had time to play many since. So at first, I didn’t care what the game looked like, or even what its story was. I wanted the loop: go out, gather, come home, and make something.

Now Rex sits by his tent cooking, reading, or asleep, and the camera roams the kingdom on its own, looking for what’s worth seeing: a raid at a town’s gate, a fair’s judging, a wedding, a night at the Tavern. It says in a caption what it’s found, and you can tell it what to look for, follow anyone through their day, or speed time up and let the towns build on their own. The monsters have names and families now, and their own dens, and the camera can follow them too.

And it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve played it most days since then, and every time I play, I notice something to change, so playing and tweaking have turned into the same thing. I got it working on my phone, too, and I’ve even started a spinoff that’s more modern and different: a bookbinder’s workshop generations after Rex, mostly watched through its windows, with the world going on outside.