When I was still in school, I used to hide under the blanket after lights-out and play browser games on a Nokia phone. The screen was tiny, the games barely had visuals, and most of the experience was just text with a few pixel images. Even so, those old titles still feel oddly vivid in memory.
I had actually tried building a similar text-based cultivation game back in college, but the project was shelved before it went anywhere. More than a month ago, I picked the idea up again and rebuilt it with current tools, which eventually became Lingxu.
What I did not want to make was another rigid text game where the player just taps through fixed options. Game tech has moved on, so I connected a large language model to the quest system instead.
In Lingxu, every NPC has their own background setup and memory. Rather than choosing from preset dialogue branches, you can simply type and talk to them directly. What you say can affect how later events unfold, and their attitude and responses are generated on the fly. The result is a style of interaction that feels much less mechanical than older text games.
The whole thing has only been in development for a little over a month. During that time, I was also doing an internship and preparing for job interviews, so most of the coding happened in whatever free time I could carve out. A lot of the game is still being filled in bit by bit, but the core systems are already online.
Right now, players can fight monsters, level up, manage inventory, and gather materials. Once enough cultivation has been accumulated, it becomes possible to break through to the next realm, starting from the Weiming stage and steadily climbing upward on the path of cultivation. Combat is turn-based. Regular encounters are fairly straightforward, but boss fights do require at least some attention to stats, calculations, and build choices.
This is a purely non-profit personal project. It mostly exists as a way to practice technical skills while finally making an old idea real. That said, plugging in AI and keeping the server running creates a fixed monthly cost. To help cover that expense, I decided to sell the game’s source code on Xianyu.
As for the server I’m running myself, it’s completely open to play for free. There is no cash shop, no monthly card, no points exchange system, and no hidden monetization layer—just a free server for anyone who wants to try it.
Because the project has only been under active development for a short time, there are definitely bugs buried in the code and parts of the design that still need work. If you run into errors while playing, or if you have suggestions for improving the AI prompts, feedback is always useful.
Development is also moving slowly for a simple reason: one person is handling both the programming and the content. Anyone interested in game balance, quest writing, or equipment design would be genuinely welcome to help expand the world and fill in what’s still missing.
The test version is available here: https://game.shiyu.dev