Show HN: I built an AI that turns any book into a text adventure game

Overall reception & concept

• Many commenters find the idea “fun”, “cool”, and an impressive proof‑of‑concept, especially for beloved SF/F books (Rama, Project Hail Mary, Culture novels, LOTR, The Witcher, etc.).
• Some say they’d mainly use it for worlds they’re already deeply attached to; others see it as a niche but appealing way to “walk around” inside their own or others’ fiction.
• A few compare it to existing AI-DM or AI Dungeon‑style projects and predict that eventually one such system will become a mainstream hit, but feel we’re not there yet.

UX, performance & implementation

• Many users hit rate limits or blank story screens; the “Try Again” button sometimes resends the literal text “Try Again”.
• Suggestions include loaders/spinners, better error handling, and precomputing branches to reduce latency and token use, at the cost of uniqueness.
• Several praise the UI/visual polish but note issues like dark mode crashes.

Narrative quality, continuity & constraints

• Recurrent criticism: LLM narratives often forget state (e.g., Gandalf appearing twice, bar fights ignored, perspective switching) and break in‑universe rules.
• People describe AI DMs as “yes‑men” that let the player steer everything, resulting in shallow, repetitive stories and a “hollow” feeling compared to authored text adventures.
• Multiple commenters argue that good games need constraints, consistent world state and memory, and a sense of time; plain chat‑style wrappers around LLMs are weak here.
• Others describe more complex architectures: auxiliary databases for world state, constraints that reject absurd actions, hierarchical story planning, and prompt techniques to ground environment and reduce retconning.

Design ideas & extensions

• Proposed features: structured choice types (action/dialogue/investigation), planning and summaries between turns, RNG‑driven endings, image/illustration support, visual novel–style dialogue selectors, themed backgrounds.
• Some suggest alternate uses: non‑fiction adventures, study/quiz modes that follow a book’s plot, or strictly canon‑following modes.
• There’s curiosity about how it handles difficult texts (Joyce, Kafka, unreliable narrators).

Copyright, legality & data use

• Several raise copyright concerns, especially for popular series; others argue this may be fair use or that culture should be shareable.
• Clarifications: the system relies on the LLM’s training data and/or user‑supplied Gemini keys; no PDF upload exists yet.
• Users ask about API key security; the author says keys are stored only in browser session storage, with possible encrypted persistence later.

AI vs. “real art” debate

• Some reject “AI slop games”, valuing human‑crafted narrative intention and constraints.
• Others push back, arguing personal enjoyment and solitary experiences are valid, and that AI can be a tool even if fully AI‑generated output feels more like “stimuli” than art.