Hello folks! If you are here, you might be asking 'what the **** is this'. And it's a very valid question.
Love and Lie is an experimental life-sim, with dialogue based gameplay mechanics, and AI driven NPCs. Fully offline, and with privacy first in mind.
I use the word AI deliberately, and in literal, original meaning. The game utilizes modern language models to do what they were originally designed to - process natural language, interpret the dialogue, classify sentences, and create a seamless bridge between human speech and the discrete data it holds. Love and Lie uses AI for problems that can be only solved with AI, not where it's easier to replace real work with AI.
Real Conversations
LLM generated dialogues in games are nothing new at this point. It takes maybe 10 minutes to set up the chat interface, connect it to a large language model in the cloud, call it a day - or maybe even 'AI'.
But we do a bit more.
Love and Lie conversations are not constrained by context length, internet latency, or whatever prompt rules are enforced by the language model cloud service. We use a combination of conditionals, custom trained models and the environment data, to constantly process NPC intentions, emotions and opinions, resulting in procedurally generated interactions with the game world. This gives us the ability to nudge and steer our NPCs, without directly holding their hands, while player is free to go off the rails.
Real Decisions
We've all seen scripted gameplay like that. Our character enters some place, triggers some invisible switch and the NPC talks to us with some canned introductory dialogue. We've all seen RPGs where we can select the answer, sometimes even an evil one. Just not too evil.
This wasn’t scripted. None of it was scripted.
In the scene you see above, the NPC is only aware of who they are (their traits, such as personality, what they are wearing, their memories, attitude, physical appearance, etc.) and their surroundings (the general spatial awareness of where they are, what is around them, who they see, what they hold, hear, feel, what time it is, and so on). That's it.
- The NPC started talking not because of some in-game trigger, but because they noticed the player character enter the room, and decided to speak.
- The dialogue wasn't programmed to be about the soda, the NPC is just aware of objects (such as soda cans) around it, or the mess in their home.
- The task to clean the house was executed not because of scripted action, but random organic intention, based on NPC's needs, traits, and the state of the world around them.
Real Opinions
Each interaction affects your relation with the NPCs. Dialogue is the main gameplay mechanic of Love and Lie - every time you talk with an NPC, the NPC rates how they feel about what you've said. Impress the NPC, and your interaction rating will go up. Work your interactions rating up and up to turn strangers into acquaintances, acquaintances into friends, and friends into lovers. Make sure to think before speaking, but think fast - the NPCs can talk to you unprompted, or assume you are ignoring/ghosting them if you don’t answer fast enough.
The NPCs will judge you. Constantly.
Through conversations you will find out what the NPCs are interested in, who they are, and if you are lucky enough - invite them to a date or even ask to follow them to your place. Just farm the positive interactions, until your NPC health is low enou... Wait, no, wrong game. Until the relationship rating is high enough that you can ask them to date (or even marry) you. And catch them all, or something. The NPCs might judge, but we don't.
Real Intentions
The Sentence Processing Model is what binds the whole game engine together. Without it the game would be just a budget The Sims clone, with limited ability to generate dialogues that minimally affect gameplay. The SPM is the bridge that links the in-game AI with the local language models, allowing the NPC to interact with the world around them. Our custom trained Qwen models perform interpretation of dialogues, disassembling complex natural language into machine-readable, discrete instructions.
Even if the instructions are odd.
If you ask an NPC to meet you for a date, and the NPC agrees, it means the decision was interpreted, the plan has been created, and the action will be scheduled, all without forcing the player into any pre-made situations. You can convince the NPC to follow you to your home, or ask them to invite you to theirs. You can arrive at the date with a bouquet of roses, or holding a taxidermied beaver. NPCs can ask you to fulfill their life goal, or vow revenge on you, causing a chain of interactions and dialogues that permanently affect the simulated world and its inhabitants. And if the angry husband says they will punch you in your face - start running, they just may.
Real Privacy
Now let's stop beating around the bush. Yes, it's fully private. Yes, it's fully local. Yes, it's fully offline. There are many reasons why I don't believe this kind of game should (or could) run in a cloud (least of them is the cost of such service). And there are even more reasons why I fully believe this is what small, local language models are meant to do. Contrary to what leather clad chip manufacturers want us to believe, you already have the hardware to run AI in your home, and there is no good reason to share your self-conversations with a multi billion dollar company. They probably already know too much about your dirty habits by this point.
No one will ever read what you told that one NPC. Not a single byte will ever leave your PC.
While most of the generative industry is obsessed with creating bigger, smarter models, I utilize multiple very small models from Qwen team, that have been trained on our own datasets to create a set of super-performant fine-tuned models for our particular needs. Running at 60FPS, without waiting 30 seconds for the answer because we need to send it from a water chugging datacenter on another continent.
Real AI
No one needs more slop. Whether it's artificial slop, or human made slop. And i'm not interested in creating more of either. If anything, this is an attempt to use generative technology to make experiences that otherwise couldn’t be predicted, either by us, devs, or you - the players. That's why we are using AI. Because that's the only way to make a life-sim that can be truly procedural, dynamic and lifelike.
And for some simple fun. Obviously.
We want to utilize the open source tech, affordable training, and increasingly optimized models, to popularize local, cloud independent models for random people with normal computers. I invite you all to follow this project on its journey full of unexpected stories, fun interactions and spicy dialogues. Whether you will find an amusing digital companion in one of our NPCs, or just have some laughs by messing with our early AI - I will be happy to host you on our little simulated island, and see how your arrival will affect the lives of our NPCs. And hopefully, they will be as real to you, as you are to them.
Playtests and demo soon. Follow Discord for details. Cheers!
Wojciech ‘Koksny’ Górny
The above footage is from work-in-progress Alpha version. Videos are on our Discord.