Status

Early-development.

Alpha is here: Threat Budget

What it is

It’s a turn-based roguelike with the inspiration of Jupiter Hell and Worm. Jupiter Hell is a tough turn based game. Worm is a superhero web serial that’s really about cumulative consequence. It has powers that interact in ways that feel more carefully designed than most games.

The idea followed pretty naturally: Jupiter Hell but parahuman powers instead of guns.

Worm has a PRT classification system. Parahumans get threat ratings: Blaster 5, Mover 2, etc. In Threat Budget, those ratings become the character creator boundaries. The game sums the ratings of your opponents into a “threat budget” and builds the fight from that number. Classification also drives enemy AI. A Blaster AI plays differently than a Brute.

Permadeath ends the run; nothing carries over to the next character… but the city doesn’t reset. Territory, factions, named capes, escalation all persist. Die, roll a new cape, find the world in whatever state you left it.

Stack

TypeScript, Vite, rot.js for algorithms, PixiJS for rendering, React for the UI layer. Building it LLM-heavy — the architecture is designed around small, verifiable tasks so generated code can actually be trusted.

Where it’s at

A really early combat slice is done. Adding in features in this order:

• Combat enhancements — enemy awareness that spreads between enemies, exploding barrels
• Lighting and darkness — affecting sight and hit chance
• Power system — six archetypes (Ranged, Bruiser, Controller, Commander, Skirmisher, Support), all abilities as JSON content files
• Smart enemy AI — classification-driven doctrine; Blasters play differently than Brutes; threat-budget spawn generation replaces hand-placed enemies
• Status effects — burning, poison, slow, stun, bleeding; interactions between them (fire cancels freeze, water cleanses burning)
• Mission objectives — beyond “clear the map”: extract, hold, recon, survive; constraints like non-lethal or stay unseen; civilians on the board
• Dialogue — branching dialogue with condition and effect evaluation; per-mission consequences recorded
• Persistent city — territory, faction strength, escalation, named capes; each run writes its outcomes back to the city before it ends
• Team affiliation — hero, villain, or rogue; AI teammates who fight beside you under their own classification doctrine
• Narrative content — named cape roster, faction storylines tied to escalation, at least one Endbringer-tier set piece
• Polish — animation, audio, accessibility