This week I wanted to take a little break from the heavy stuff. It has been a month, the war is still raging, and me, my wife, and our four kids are still at home. I have been doing my best to balance, well, everything. Work, family, stress, routine, and the constant background noise of reality. I needed a bit of an escape.

When I was younger, meaning about five minutes ago 😄, I really loved quest games. I also played a bit of Dungeons & Dragons when I was young. With the progress of AI, I kept thinking how cool it would be to use AI as the dungeon master. A quick Google search makes it clear that I am definitely not the only person who had this idea. But still, I have Claude, so why not just build it myself?

So this weekend I went on a little quest (yes, that was intentional 😄), and used Claude to build a small web based, fully open source, and almost completely free game inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. I called it Elder Realm.

The process started before a single line of code was written. I sat with Claude and defined the specifications, a few rounds of back and forth, Claude asking questions, me answering and refining what I actually wanted to achieve. Once the spec felt solid, I handed it to Claude Code, which built a plan and started implementing. The first version was already playable. I then spent a few hours playing it, identifying what felt off, and iterating. Each round was usually better than the last, until it felt ready to share with the world as an MVP.

A note on process

I am still amazed at how fast you can go from nothing to something with AI today. But, and this is where I briefly put my JDD hat back on, that speed is only useful if you bring judgment into every turn. You still need to know when something is not right, when to push back, when to steer. The AI does not replace that. It amplifies it, for better or worse.

What I optimized for

While building it, I tried to stick to a few simple principles:

  1. Bring your own AI. Provider and model are your choice.
  2. Low token usage. You can enjoy the game without watching a cost counter.
  3. Cheap models work fine. You are playing a game, not trying to solve the Middle East conflict.
  4. Privacy first. Nothing goes to a server. Not your key, not your story, nothing. Everything stays local.
  5. Save and load. Pick up your adventure whenever you want.
  6. Export your story. Save it as a Markdown file and enjoy it later.
  7. KISS. Keep it simple.

Try it

You can play it here:

newrealm.co/projects/elder-realm

And the source is here:

github.com/newrealmco/elder_realm

I hope you enjoy this little game, and maybe it gives you, and me, a bit of peace of mind. And I hope that better, more peaceful days are coming, soon, to all of us.

Happy Passover, Easter, or whatever you celebrate.