Asciilands is completely free to play, with optional donations for those who want to help me keep the servers up. Logging in with your Discord allows for continuing progress across multiple devices as well as the social stuff like Friends, Parties, and Towns.

Right now only Desktop and Laptop browsers are supported. Mobile and a downloadable client/Steam game would be next in line!

Progress does save, both for guest accounts and if you are logged in with Discord. The world itself is also persistent. It is possible that there will be wipes down the line, though unless 100% necessary that would probably just be for builds and the world and not necessarily for items.

Leave your bug report in #bug-reports! Provide as much detail as possible (check the Debug menu in Settings).

Give any suggestions in #suggestions. Explain what you wanted to do and why.

There are many opposing views on AI in today's world, all the more so in the game dev community. I've done my best to take a thoughtful and practical approach to AI use in Asciilands' development.

First, to be plain: AI was used copiously to write the code of Asciilands. The truth is that when it comes to coding, Asciilands couldn't exist without AI assistance. AI-written code will soon be in essentially all software, as the efficiency it gives to development is insane. While I enjoy doing a few Leetcode problems every now and then, I've never been an amazing coder, and even if I was, it would've taken many more years to create Asciilands without AI help.

Other assets, like artwork and music, are a different story. More on that below.

All user-facing text in Asciilands is human-written, or at least it should be - if you find placeholder AI-written text please let me know immediately in #bug-reports so I can replace it myself.

Asciilands contains a mixture of inherited materials from Asciicker (more on that below), appropriately licensed 3rd-party resources (i.e. free resources made available online), my own manual work, and AI-generated resources.

All AI-generated assets are meant as placeholders. Unfortunately I lack the talent to make the number of assets required at any quality, and I lack the money to hire the talented people who could do it for me.

I want to replace all assets, eventually, with professionally commissioned artwork. Initial donation funding goals will be for server-hosting, but if we reach that, the next goal will be to save for these commissions. Ultimately this ambition is dependent on the game's success.

https://asciilands.io/credits

The main theme of Asciilands comes from a warm-up piece I used to play on the piano growing up. I honestly do not know where it originally comes from - if someone can let me know, please do! (I really hope it's not copyrighted).

Unfortunately, my musical talent essentially ran out there. While I still can play piano a little, I've never been a songwriter. Outside of a few original ideas from me just playing with the piano for a while, the music in Asciilands (besides the main theme) is all arranged by AI (with a few manual edits here and there by me on the midi). This is yet another area I would love to hire a professional to overhaul and improve, and I will, should Asciilands receive enough funding through donations.

All support for Asciilands is voluntary. Donations will first go towards server hosting, and then toward replacing AI-assets with human-made assets. This will be as transparent as possible.

More info at: https://asciilands.io/credits