I've always been a bit frustrated by the classic "pick 1 of 3 pre-written dialogue options" in detective games, so I decided to build something different to break that mold. It's a cyberpunk-themed indie game called Chronos City: AI Detective, and I just released it!
My goal was to make you feel like you are actually sitting in a gritty interrogation room. You're in a dark, neon-lit city dealing with gruesome, highly technical (and confusing) murders. But all you have is your notebook, some evidence, and suspects who really don't want to talk.
To make the dialogue and atmosphere completely dynamic, I used AI technology to power the core interrogation mechanics.
What's in the game?
- Limitless Interrogations: You talk to characters by typing your own sentences. Every character has a hidden identity, lies, fears, and a "Biometric Stress" level. As you corner them, their stress rises, and they'll start to panic (and visually glitch out on your screen).
- Brain-Melting Autopsies: Victims aren't just "stabbed." You'll have to decipher complex forensic reports involving nano-drones, cellular acids, and cyber-brain hacks to figure out which profession could have used the murder weapon.
- Detective Tools: Just talking isn't enough. You can request DNA tests, use search warrants to raid suspects' homes, find and hack "Encrypted Data Disks," or offer bribes to extract critical info.
- Time (Focus) Management: You don't have unlimited time. Every question and test consumes your "Focus Points." If you don't manage your time wisely, the day ends before you learn anything useful.
- Chaos System: Send the wrong (innocent) person to be executed, and the city descends into chaos. Find the real killer, and you'll get to hear their real-time "last words" on the execution table.
Seems you have to bring your own LLM API key so doesn't sound like my cup of tea, but at least sounds like an indie dev trying to make an interesting use of this technology
Bringing your own LLM seems like the only sensible way to do this, given the potential cost involved.
I was wondering how long it would be until we started seeing this sort of use of LLMs in games, and I definitely thought it would come from indie first rather than big studios. There's too much danger of things getting derailed or inappropriate for studios to risk it, I think.
I'm interested to try, but disappointed you have to use a specific corpo implementation rather than being able to point it at a self-hosted endpoint. Means I'll also be giving this a pass, despite my curiosity.
I'm assuming this is a solo developer (just because they usually are on Itch) and that's just the one they know or happened to pick. Given that a text-generator seems like a pretty useful tool for a text-based adventure then I'd be surprised if there aren't others out there. Maybe if you're lucky someone has already made a more configurable one, or there's an open-source one you could reimplement pointing at your own instance?