Thronedream
A downloadable game for Windows
A solo card game where AI generates cards and story based on any setting you describe - and reacts to everything you do.
Play as:
- A patrician in vampire-ruled Rome. Desecrate a temple; face blood wraith legions.
- A queen in a realm of warring houses. Execute a rival noble; their house's vengeance arrives as threat cards.
- A hacker building an empire in Neo-Tokyo. Discover a sentient AI; it starts supplying prototype cybertech.
Or, forget the presets. Your hometown as the kingdom. Your friends as the characters. Set it in the past, in the future, or add a fantastical twist. The more personal your world, the more interesting the game becomes.
A single playthrough takes about 45-60 minutes across three acts. Each act gives you a narrative goal that shapes how you play - one act might push you to build influence, another to take down a specific threat.
Thronedream is in early access. Expect rough edges, evolving features, less guidance, and a developer who wants your feedback.
How it works: Thronedream uses real-time AI generation, which has real costs. You get a free trial to try out the game. After that, you purchase credit packs that are consumed as you play - you only pay for what you use. A standard playthrough typically consumes $1 worth of credits.
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What really damning is that this is a pay-to-play game with significant top-up requirements to play it beyond the worst quality art and writing. I don't know why I'd pay for this over just straight ChatGPT, which would serve more functions.
The main reason you'd consider this over straight ChatGPT is that there's a full card game, with rules and a balanced challenge, integrated with the AI content. ChatGPT is great for freeform roleplay, but this is designed as an actual game experience.
And I don't see why I'd pay to top up here as opposed to buying a pay-once-and-play-forever card game if I want a card game.
I just don't see why I'd want to pay $10 for 10 runs at minimal quality, just over 4 games at maximum writing quality and minimum artwork quality, or under 2½ games at maximum quality. Just from a cost-benefit analysis, this seems like a really unwise use of my disposable income, when I can spend $20 a month on ChatGPT and use it as much as I want.
Also, I don't think you realize how little having a full card game integrated in with ChatGPT is as a selling point. With a freeform RPG, my choices are literally limited to my imagination, whereas with this card game you've included, I'm literally locked into decisions based on the cards I have in my hand, even if those represent decisions I wouldn't make in the situation. Essentially, ChatGPT is substitute for a living GM, whereas having to play within the framework of a card game restricts my decisions to much smaller number of choices, and as somebody who comes from a tabletop RPG background, I don't find that to be a good thing.
Also, I don't think you understand how cheap $20 a month for the versatility of ChatGPT is compared to $1 a run at minimum quality of your game is; you've already mentioned using ChatGPT as a substitute GM, but you can also use ChatGPT to do math, code, generate images within its guardrails, expand on your creative ideas, edit your writing for grammar and spelling, etc.
Which is really just a really roundabout way of saying, I don't think your pricing model is very good.
I appreciate your response. You're right that this isn't competing with ChatGPT on price or versatility - it can't.
What I'm testing is whether there's a niche audience that values this particular combination of structured card game and dynamic narrative enough to pay the premium. That audience may be small, and that's ok.
As for the price, it is unfortunately dictated by the cost of serving the experience, not what I think it *should* cost.
AI? Really?