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About the Game

Spin a tale, Shape a world — Co-creative Storytelling Game, powered by AI

1001 Nights is a witchy story-crafting game driven by a language model (like ChatGPT) and inspired by Persian Folklore. You play as Shahrazad, who can turn tales into reality. Your goal is to tell stories to an evil King, guiding him to mention weapons that materialize into tools for your fight...

Intro

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world"

This is a story-crafting game where you need to survive an AI overlord by telling stories.

Inspired by the Persian folktale collection, this game follows the story of an evil king who, betrayed by his wife, marries a new maiden each day only to execute her the following morning. You, as Shahrzad, become his next bride. You possess the secret magic to turn language into reality... Can you end his reign of terror?

As the heroine Shahrzad, you have the magic that turns other one's language into reality! Guide the King (powered by AI) to mention weapons in his continuation, such as 'sword', 'knife', or 'shield' ... they materialize as weapons for you to fight the king!

The new reality from the tales will gradually emerge through cutting-edge AI large language models. Every story is unique between you and the King...

Trailer

https://youtu.be/LQ2X3yiqsR8?si=tATJeFlokXtqvfD8

Key features

Designed for content creation

Our game is built for streaming and community interaction. You can create unique stories featuring your viewers' names, memes, or personal touches, and watch as the AI King responds in surprising ways.
Similar to games like AI2U and Suck Up, but focused on creative storytelling --- At the end of each playthrough, you'll receive a personalized storybook of your adventure.

From Language to Reality driven by AI

Fueled by AI language models, witness your narrated tales metamorphose into visual realities, merging with the game's pixel art aesthetics.

Battle with Weapons from Your Tale

Each weapon collected from the story is unique based on your stories!
Use the weapons you collected to face and fight the King, in the story world that merged from your tales...

Challenge Traditional Norms of Folklore

Embody Shahrzad and defy ancient brutal patriarchal conventions…

Academic Foundations in Gameplay

"1001 Nights" isn't just a game; it's also an art and academic research project since 2020 based on GPT-2 (grandmother of ChatGPT). We've published two papers in the fields of AI and interactive storytelling during its development, which disclosed the behind system of the game.

History

The earliest version of the game was a demo created by the main developer Yuqian in 2020 as a master's course project, utilizing a fine-tuned GPT-2, well before the release of ChatGPT in 2022.

Afterwards, the game was invited to participate in several art exhibitions. In 2021, as Yuqian began her PhD studies and AI technology advanced, the game transitioned to being powered by Dreamily.ai, a story-writing model, and the first paper on the game was published in 2022.

Due to the limitations of AI at that time, the game remained a small-scale experiment, unable to handle industry challenges like player input evaluation. However, the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022 and the advancement of generative AI, especially large language models (LLMs), provided solutions to these issues. Consequently, Yuqian decided to further develop the game as an indie game, founding the team Ada Eden in early 2023 to explore the potential of AI in storytelling.

The game then transitioned to using contemporary LLM models, such as GPT-4, and incorporated visual generation in based on storytelling. This workflow was published in the second paper in 2023.

At the beginning of 2024, following Steam's policy changes regarding AI, "1001 Nights" launched its Steam page and was nominated for the A MAZE. Award.

About the Developer team “Ada Eden”

Currently, Ada Eden is a self-funded indie team without any funding or income from 1001 Nights.

“Ada Eden” is a group named after the pioneering programmer Ada Lovelace. We were established in early 2023 to progressively develop games and conduct research in the field of creative storytelling based on AI. The main members include Yuqian Sun (producer, art director, programmer and lead designer), lead programmer Artemy, assistant programmers, writers, musician and artists, collaborating remotely across China, UK and North America.

Press & Talks

**Ada Eden’s AI-powered 1001 Nights is a human story about narrative power - Premortem games**

A MAZE. / Berlin 2024 - 1001 Nights: How to make large language models into an ancient King

Videos

Available on google drive

https://youtu.be/LQ2X3yiqsR8

https://youtu.be/0Q-55K7M2xI

A highlight video from Hanakyo

Screenshots

All available on google drive

GIFs

All available on google drive

Logos

All available on google drive

Game logo

Team Logo

Game Icon

Awards & Recognition

Next Level Festival, Dortmund, UK, 2024

AMAze Festival, Berlin, Germany - Nominee of Explorer Award, 2024

Now Play This, London, UK - Official selection 2024

Gamescom, Cologne, Germany, 2023

WePlay - IndiePlay, Shanghai, China - Presented as Nominee - 2023

Book of Sand: Aiiiii Art Center, Shanghai, China - Invited - 2021

Awards

2022 Lumen Prize - Longlist in 3D/Interactives

2023 IndiePlay - Nominated for Best Innovation & Best Student Game

2024 A Maze Awards - Nominated for Explorer Award

Presentation

GDC - **Game AI Summit: LLM as Core Gameplay: Co-Creative Storytelling in '1001 Nights' (Coming Up), 2025**

Game AI Summer School, Malta, 2024

Sony Entertainment UK Demo Presentation - Official selection 2023

Academic contributions

Presented in academic conferences:

DiGRA, Guadalajara, Jalisco, México, 2024 (Upcoming)

Foundation of Digital Games (FDG), Athens, Greece, 2023

27th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) Poster Session, Barcelona, Spain, 2022

Academic Papers

V1 Paper (2022, Early version)

Y. Sun, X. Ni, et al., “Bringing Stories to Life in 1001 Nights: A Co-creative Text Adventure Game Using a Story Generation Model”, International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS 2022) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22298-6_42 Also available at ResearchGate

V2 Paper (2023, new version)

Y. Sun, Z. Li, et al.， “Language as Reality: A Co-Creative Storytelling Game Experience in 1001 Nights using Generative AI”， AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE-23) https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AIIDE/article/view/27539

Credits

This game is adapted from One Thousand and One Nights. It's played via the medium of storytelling itself. In this game, language may invade into reality and become your weapon.

Developed by Ada Eden

Credit list: （Alphabetical order） Producer & Director: Yuqian Sun (CheeseTalk) Lead Developer: Artemy Developers: Jiaying Fu, Peiyun Liu, SoySauceFor3, Eileen Wang Prompt Engineer & AI System Designer: Zhouyi Li System Designer: Shoushou Character Artist: Angela Wu Environmental Artist: Xiruo Wang UI Designer: Huichuan Wang Narrative Designer: Finlay, Kate Vi, Zoe Jun Ge Musician: Cu, Aoi Sho Community Management and Marketing: Theresa Johnson, Stella Li, Raine Li, Shiyu, Xinyue, Faye Zhou

Modeling Assistant: Charon Shen Localization: Evlyn Feng Cultural Consultant: Yekta Kalantar Hormozi

Some models are adapted from Tuturu (Sketchfab) under a CC Attribution 4.0 License.

Trial LLM: GLM Font: Dinkie bitmap - atelierAnchor Other Assets: Sketchfab 3D model - Tuturu, Ambient Horror Indie Game Music - Crow Shade Special Thanks: Dual-X Studio (For early-stage brand strategy, visual design direction and marketing consulting)

For detailed AI content disclosure, please check www.1001nights.ai

Contact

Inquiries [email protected] or Discord