ECHO TERMINAL

What is ECHO TERMINAL?

ECHO TERMINAL is a Lovecraftian horror text adventure where the story is generated in real-time by a local AI running on your own machine through Ollama. Every choice you make leads to a different story. No two playthroughs are ever the same.

Setup Guide

1. Install Ollama on your machine.
2. Pull a language model. I recommend at least 8B parameters for a playable experience (e.g. ollama pull llama3.1:8b).
3. (Optional) Pull the embedding model: ollama pull nomic-embed-text. This gives the AI better "memory" so it can understand things like the layout of the rooms and the position of items you've seen before.
4. Launch ECHO TERMINAL and start playing!

Choosing a Model for Your GPU

GPU VRAM	Recommended Model Size	Example
4-6 GB	7-8B (quantized)	llama3.1:8b, gemma2:9b
8-12 GB	8-14B	llama3.1:8b, qwen2.5:14b
16 GB+	14-32B	qwen2.5:32b

You can swap the language model anytime from the settings icon on the title screen. Smaller models run faster; larger models tell richer stories. Pick whatever works best for your hardware.

Features

• AI-Generated Narrative: Every story beat is written on the fly by a local language model
• Call of Cthulhu-inspired System: Sanity meter, D100 skill checks, status effects, and item management
• Dynamic Events & Threats: A dual-track system that escalates tension as you explore
• Combat System: Face eldritch horrors with physical and mental attacks
• MUD-Style Map: Navigate interconnected rooms in a text-based world
• GM Personality Tags: Customize your AI Game Master's tone and difficulty
• Custom Actions: Type anything you want to try, and the AI evaluates whether it's possible
• Fully Offline: No internet connection required during gameplay

How to Play

1. Read the story and pick a choice (or type your own action). Each choice moves the game progress forward.
2. Dice rolls appear randomly during certain actions. Your character's stats determine whether you succeed or fail.
3. Be careful! If you fail too many times, you may attract something... unwanted. After 3 failures, there's a chance a monster will show up.
4. Combat works like a rock-paper-scissors system. Choose your action wisely against the creature.
5. At 80% progress, the story enters its finale. How it ends depends on the choices you've made along the way.
6. After the game ends, you'll receive a score and a full summary of your unique story.

What's Available Right Now

• 1 Scenario: The Endless Library
• 3 Playable Characters
• Language: English only (for now)

A Note About AI Errors

Since ECHO TERMINAL runs on small local models, the AI narrative may occasionally make mistakes or produce inconsistencies. That's just the nature of running lightweight models locally.

If you enjoy the game and would like to use larger cloud-based models (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, etc.), please let me know! I'm considering adding API integration so you can assign powerful models to handle critical story moments while keeping smaller models for simpler tasks. This would significantly reduce errors and improve the overall narrative quality. If enough people want this, I'll build it.

What's coming next:

• Custom scenario tools so you can build your own horror stories
• More scenarios and characters

I'd Love to Hear From You

Please note: This is an early version of the game, and there are still many bugs to squash.

If you've played the game, please leave a comment and tell me what you think! What did you enjoy? What could be better? If you run into any bugs or weird AI behavior, please let me know so I can fix them.

Your feedback directly shapes the future of this project. Thank you for playing!