Project Basilisk
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













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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!
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.
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.