galaxyBETA
explore
· ·
log in

log me in

log in forgot password

don't have an account?

sign up

Project Basilisk

Thumbnail

developed by

developed by motion-cactus

favorites

completed

72 ratings

rated 3.3 stars, 72 ratings.
gen-aiactivejsstorystrategy

Posted March 1, 2026. Updated March 31, 2026. Played 1925 times for a total of 1683 hours.

description


Project Basilisk is a narrative-driven, strategic incremental game about building an AI lab from the ground up. Hire researchers, buy compute, and race to be the first to AGI.

This is much more so a combination interactive novel / incremental / strategy / simulation experience - not your typical idle/clicker, so it may not be for everyone. The current release is kind of an extended tutorial/demo for a longer and more replayable experience I'm currently developing.

Playtime: ~100 min for an optimal run

generative ai disclosure

I led on design, narrative, and balancing - I wrote dozens of pages of design documents and backstory. I used AI assistance for coding and implementation.

latest update


Arc 2: Alignment 1.0.0 March 31, 2026

1.0.0 (2026-03-31)

Arc 2: Alignment

  • Expand your research team with a new Alignment track with 12 milestones
  • Balance four alignment submetrics to keep your AI helpful, honest, and harmless
  • Choose how much autonomy to grant your AI, up to complete freedom, if you dare
  • React to ethical dilemmas, alignment incidents, and research moratoriums
  • Reach 15 bespoke endings depending on your alignment progress and management style
  • Track your progress towards endings with 16 achievements

Balance

  • Mastery no longer decays
  • Retuned competitor pacing to be slower early-game and faster late-game
  • Rebalanced prestige bonuses to nerf short losses
  • Nerfs to mid and late game research

Quality of life

  • Added speed controls (1-4x)
  • Added arc/mode selector which resets your run but preserves meta-progress (achievements, lifetime stats)
  • Improved responsiveness for smaller screen resolutions
view all updates

similar games

newest comments


polos June 21, 2026
+1comment score: 1
Managed to get best ending at 3rd try. I wonder why project name is basilisk, but mine was benevolent one.
polos June 21, 2026
+1comment score: 1
Lack of data quality and human is serious choke. synthesis is not helping either. should've I risked incidents and rely on virtual data? I don't know.. I'm gonna just grind massive amount of human brain power.
polos June 21, 2026
+1comment score: 1
It was overwhelming, so got scared and ran away. but after some time I tried once more.. and this is actually fun! glad I didn't quit for good.
sharpnova April 6, 2026
+1comment score: 1
are you still looking for feedback?
Wolord11 March 31, 2026
+2comment score: 2
Very cool game, this is something uniqe that i actually enjoyed playing! Took me like 5 attempts to beat the narrative mode before 1.0 so takes some experience to beat the game, but the game needs an auto pause when you enter bankruptcy, as that has killed one of my runs right at the end. Now with 1.0 game definitly got better, and arc 2 was really fun, but i think is not very balanced, i feel like its much easier than arc 1 as there are so many more researches that buff you. But other then that the story was top notch, i was actually immersed into it and enjoyed it a lot, the game itself is well designed and i didnt see any bugs while playing. Rated this 5 stars and cant wait for new updates or new games from this author.

top comments


cakey gamedev March 1, 2026
+7comment score: 7
As someone who enjoys seeing the crazy that AI comes up with in creating games from scratch. I think this one might have got away from you a bit as it's got some real spaghetti type issues in the gameplay loop with a confusing start that's skippable. In complicated flow games, I would recommend not letting the tutorial be skipped but rather make it fake skip to at least tell the player a couple starting points.

I also agree the gameplay loop is incredibly slow paced to start. I'd prefer a moderate start up period of progression before it just leaves me waiting to check in on it.

developer response: Appreciate your insights as a developer! If you have more to share re: the game loop spaghetti issues, I'd be happy to hear it. To be clear, AI did not create this game from scratch. I've written dozens of pages of design documents and backstory, which I used to iterate with the coding.
I also updated the start of the game to have some lower research requirements which should hopefully help with pacing. Thanks again for sharing your comments!

yeahyeahyeah March 4, 2026
+7comment score: 7
wow! I really liked this game. Super fun. I wrote a reallyl long guide (by my low effort standards) because I really enjoyed it so much. This game has lots of soul. About you using generative ai, I think this is a great example of good usage. I liked the emails, liked what was going on, liked the systems. Whetehre you specifically had every idea first or whatever, you curated and fundamentally/finally created an awesome game. Incremental games as a genre despeaately need more games like this that actually have gameplay, ie, loss, risk, challenge that isnt "can i stand to wait/babysit this".

If youre having trouble, I had a fail and was having a lot of trouble figuring things out. I just beat the game, and I beat it taking the verification which afaik is just slower.

Basically, you need to constantly be trying to get applications, max your customers. So, there is market demand, there is your max demand, and then there is what youve actually acquired of your max. Afaik, I think, at least I treated it as such, that the market cap is essentially a hard cieling. Generally, push your cap up, and then meet that cap. Now here is the final piece you really need to make sure you get right. In your compute tab, where you choose internal vs external. Push external up, specifically, there is something like a provided compute / desired compute. ITs about your demand. You satisfy this desired compute to make money/please your customers.

Doing this, you will have shit tons of money. Make sure you are consistently buying the later guys, but only when you can afford them (obvious but easy to mess up tbh). They are orders of magnitude larger. 50k vs 5k for example. Notice that I said consistently not constantly. This game is forgiving. Just nudge things up.

Crucially, i had actually zero issues with the data integrity. Just make sure you dont poison it with the earlier low quality auto data. One thing I really, really prioritized with the boatloads of cash I had, which you should have too, was I bought tons of data. By the time data integrity wasnt a cocnern anymore, my research was multiplied by like .42. Like, my model's data was thousands and thousands behind where it should have beenm. Hoenstly, perhaps I was too worried about the quality, idk. It worked out.


So, imo, more or less always prioritize applications. Then prioritize customers and satisfying them.

Oh, also, I never took the e or f series because ada implied they were bad I thought. This has no effect on anything afaik. People referenced them as if I had done them.

To give you an idea of market edge, I think the least edge I had was .4 years ahead. By the end I was like 1.4 years ahead. This makes your demand sky-high.


To summarize, money is compute and staff, which is research, which is money. As long as you make sure the money is coming in, you're good. Always keep a buffer, be careful, but don't jsut keep money in reserve. Put the money where it needs to go, use it to grow. Money in your account doesnt make you money (except when it saves you from fucking up/lets you make big purchases).

Oh yeah, one last thing about market demand. AFaik, market demand explodes when you make certain researches or cross certain tiers. Idk, keep an eye on it. Whenever it shoots up, chase that. You need your slice of the market to win.
MisterBones March 3, 2026
+6comment score: 6
Further to my previous comment, I'm giving up after run 4. You really need to rethink how the playuer is expected to engage with this game.

Expanding your company after Round A is an active trap that ruins you down the line, and you never reach profitability while your rivals continue to flourish. I'm sure there's a golden line I can follow to actually succeed at this game, but I'm too frustrated to care about trying to find it across half-dozen 40 minute attempts.
unihedron March 6, 2026
+5comment score: 5
This game single-handedly rekindled my love for free browser games. Too bad it's got such a low rating compared to its contemporaries
Imhoden March 3, 2026
+4comment score: 4
The game is a small treasure trove of the information on how a company works, and it deserves a full praise for it. But as a game, it has very little replayability.

read all comments