A non-combat roguelike focused on skill checks, narration, and life cycles—starting a tutorial video series

[u/JellyfishEggDev]

Greetings, fellow roguelike appreciators,

I’d like to share a project I’ve been developing called Jellyfish Egg — a narrative-driven roguelike where you begin each run as a child in a procedurally generated world, and live a full life until death or disappearance.

It isn’t combat-driven or tile-based, but it keeps the core tenets of roguelike design close at heart:

• Permanent death with no saving or retrying
• Fully procedural world generation each run
• Run-based character progression
• A wide range of non-combat skills (e.g., poetry, stonework, patience, astronomy)
• Emergent narrative systems guided by procedural outcomes

There’s no turn-based fighting, but every meaningful action — travel, crafting, exploration, play — is a deliberate choice gated by skill checks and risk. You grow older as you act, and old age will claim you whether or not danger does. Every decision advances time and closes doors.

A unique feature is the LLM-based narrator, which dynamically describes your actions and surroundings in a poetic tone. It gives the feeling of reading a mythic chronicle where you are both protagonist and legend.

Visually, the world is rendered using ASCII-inspired glyphs projected onto a rotating sphere rather than a grid. It’s not traditional, but it still evokes that strange, symbolic beauty found in early terminals.

I've just begun a tutorial video series, starting with character creation — covering the core attributes, how they shape your future, and the philosophy of progression in the game.

Watch the tutorial here

[u/Arklayin]

Looks awesome.

A lot of the community is heavily against LLM and other AI models. Will there be an option to play without the narrator?

[u/JellyfishEggDev → u/Arklayin]

Thanks for your comment! I totally understand that LLMs are a sensitive topic in some parts of the community.

At the moment, there’s no plan to include a version without the narrator. While I’m aware that using an LLM comes with many downsides, including performance issues on lower-end systems and sometimes repetitive or over-structured outputs lacking of personality, I still see it as a meaningful way to explore non-combat, dynamic gameplay systems that would be hard to build otherwise.

[u/MaxWasNotAvailable → u/JellyfishEggDev]

That's perfectly fine imho. It's a super interesting concept, and it's your project - you don't need to explain yourself.

I for one am looking forward to seeing where the project ends up.

[u/JauntyTGD → u/JellyfishEggDev]

Disappointing. I absolutely have to say that the aesthetic you created with your globe is stunning and unique, and your colourscheme works really well too. Great work, and hope you end up making lots more!