Hypernet Explorer
A downloadable game for Windows and Linux
Hypernet Explorer is an immersive-sim roguelike set in a weird and alternate 2001, where the Y2K bug shattered reality and erased most modern technology, that is slowly being rebuilt using magic and the occult.
Form a party to explore a 92 floor skyscraper that barely holds the cosmos together or just get lost in alternate activities; manage a cursed pizza place, become a certified tarot reader, date yourself from another plane of existence, start your own space program, get filthy rich by manipulating the soul market and... go bowling with your beloved cousin.
Every boundary that once separated religion, science, finance and magic is now obsolete so... do what thou wilt.
Discord server https://discord.gg/nJhBbSMqDU
Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/HypernetExplorer/
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/nocoldiz
Ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/nocoldiz
Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/4193010/Hypernet_Explorer/
Inspired by Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Qud, every system, from economy to weather patterns to character statuses, is simulated and interconnected: even the smallest action can have devastating butterfly effects on the global scale
univeral and multiversal scale. Every galaxy in our observable universe and beyond is modeled and explorable.
Pick from 64 base classes that range from classic RPG archetypes (wizard, hunter, knight) to modern career paths (CEO, psychologist, combat medic), each with unique abilities, social advantages, and gameplay styles. Keep class upgrades between multiple runs to avoid farming and fuse the classes you mastered to get new prestige classes.
Player biology is fully simulated, from brain activities to hormone levels and everything about what constitutes you can be altered and augmented: feeling too weak? Get carbon nanotube muscle implants! You are too smart? Get a lobotomy right now!
Gender is a social construct, but in Hypernet Explorer gender is fully commercialized! Alter your starting gender via surgical, magical and hypercapitalistic means.
Enemies have over 80 different biologies with different limbs and organs to rip and tear to weaken the stats of your enemies! Cut off a vital part or organ of an enemy to get an instant kill.
Combat is turn-based, fast and deadly: choose between a traditional RPG combat system, where you learn skills as you level, or a card-based system where you collect skills booster packs as you explore the world.
You can choose Permadeath or Roguelite mode at the start of the run, but your companions don't have this luxury: if they aren't resurrected before the end of the battle they stay dead forever.
You and your party are not that important, you are just a tiny little cog in the complex dungeon ecology and economy: every enemy you kill can be turned into raw resources that can be tinkered and shaped into over 1000 items.
Also remember that you are not the only ones exploring the dungeon but there are competing parties of adventurers who can steal your precious loot right before your eyes.
Like the "Ancient cave" style hacks of SNES games, the dungeon is not a soulless algorithmically generated one but made of handcrafted pieces that are assembled together in a way that somewhat makes sense.
You have more than 800 skills to learn: from wrestling moves to necromancy curses. Find trainers in the world, subscribe to an online course, or just continue practicing a "Generic Fireball" spell until you master it.
When you have mastered a bunch of skills, try to fuse them together to create brand new magic schools and concepts with 348,195 possible combinations.
Names are power...and money is power! And it happens that Mario Draghi's name is written over a billion times on 14.5 billion euro banknotes in pre-printing phase. This gives hypercapitalists who amassed huge amounts of euros huge arcane and political powers.
Invest in the OIL and SOUL stock market, buy real estate and squeeze rent from your tenants as you squeeze the black ichor of earth from deep oil deposits, burn your stock options in battle to summon powerful entities.
Scale every minigame and side activity with incremental games inspired mechanics: why settle for a measly greasy pizza place when you have an entire galaxy where to export the concept of "pizza"?
Other than the Omega Tower, you can explore most of Europe's major cities and landmarks on foot, by hypermetro or RV.
The world may be magic now but history follows closely our real timeline and every major event that happened in 2001 is present and can influence your run, things are weird but can get too real.
ABOUT
Release date for the demo is Q3 2026. Game will be released on both Steam and Itch.io, i also hope that the fit lady holding a spoon from Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain notices me.
No generative AI image, video or audio assets are used in this project, but i used Claude and Copilot to help debugging, translating, writing code and assisting with mass editing item/spell/enemy metadata, all text output is used just as a starting point and was hand-edited and rewritten, all custom plugin code will be made public on game release.
CREDITS
Programming, story and music: Nocoldiz
Pixel art: Pixel by Skab
Tyler Warren RPG battlers, Ashen Victor busts, Modern interiors by Limezu, TinyTales dungeon tiles, Chronicle tileset pack, Occult Steampunk, Creature compendium and Ocean's Nostalgia graphic, full credit list in-game.
All enemy sprite image were taken from 1700-1800 eras Enciclopedias, books and anatomical manuals.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- New trailer29 days ago
- Hypernet Explorer 0.3.0a released42 days ago
- Test version is out on itch!50 days ago
- Test version is out!59 days ago
- Monsters from the third dimension93 days ago
- HexapediaJun 11, 2026
- UI FitMay 22, 2026
- You can now build a lighthouse i guess?May 11, 2026
Comments
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AI ate my dog and shot my homework your evil
My taste in games has always been the kind of games where I cannot explain the gameplay to a stranger accurately in less than 100 words (SS13, Rimworld, etc.) and this is definitively the most me game I have ever played.
Oh, is there any chance you could upload the game onto itch.io? I can't join any more discord servers.
Fascinating. Maximalism as a game development principle is perhaps not a very sensible idea, but it's certainly an interesting one.
Very excited to see this grow. I hope you continue to work on this without being hindered by the people who hate you solely because you use AI. That being said, do be careful with it.
Saw Tomato playing this a few weeks ago on Twitch and just want to say, holy crap. Props on this! AI be damned, I hope this gets fleshed out more. The scale is immense if you can get it to work. There are too many haters in the comments here.
Note to haters: Fuck off if you don't like it lmao, simple as simple does. They're probably all from one doomercoomer shitting into a bucket in their 90 year-old memaw's basement wondering why they are 45 years old and haven't gotten a girlfriend yet.
is this going to be the f.a.t.a.l of top down sims
Do these guys not understand that people don't live forever? "Why don't you consume 5+ years on doing manual labor for a game and creating stress hormones". The creator wants to simply create an experience and see it live ffs, doing manual coding work isn't fun, why do you guys think it should be required? It's called QUALITY OF LIFE.
That's really funny cause the game itself is borderline unplayable.
>Account created 2 days ago
>Posts one comment glazing on the same day
Cool burner, dude
you're a retard if you think that's how humans operate
Hey, some llama.cpp folders exists under /models folder. I didn't find a cause why this exists...
You can load a local gguf model and use it for NPC responses in free dialogue mode instead of the markov chain algorithm
i really thought this was cool, but seeing AI was used in the code immediately soured any excitement I had. i'm not really sure i want to play this anymore.
It is highly recommended to get over it at your earliest convenience.
shut the fuck up dude
let these morons get left behind honestly they can join the monks and scribes who protested the printing press
Yeah I agree, I will not play it either.
does anyone on the entire planet give a fuck? no? didn't think so. cry about it LOL
the game is an absolute mess at the moment, and quite honestly the "ai assisted" code is probably the reason why if no attempt was made to optimize it yourself.
one of the main CoQ devs himself has covered quite extensively the shortcomings of AI (LLM), especially as it pertains to gamedev and modding issues like the Steam Workshop modders trying to use it for other language translation branches of Qud itself. Considering the amount of CoQ enjoyers (I myself love CoQ, and the harder it can get the more fun it's been for me to play with over 1000s of hours) interested in this project, I do hope every aspect of the game (including the codebase, gameplay design) can be seriously improved by hand and optimized with the input of fans and playtesters =)
You made the music yourself?? It’s actually peak great job dude
Close enough, welcome back Barkley 2
FIX THE LINK
Nice trailer! I think now is a good time to spruce up your patreon page, you have a lot of exposure right now and eyes on you and right now it points to a YTP page that doesn't include any english. I'd prioritize making it clear on that patreon that subscribers would get named after planets and maybe what that support would look like when it comes to this game. Hope that leads to some extra funding that gives you the opportunity to put more time into this project! Good luck.
the discord isnt working
Looks cool but the fact that you are solo deving such an ambitious game doesn't give me ANY confidence
He's coding the game with AI
not solo dev if claude is helping
Discord link in download section leading to nowhere. Also cool project!
saw trailer on yt got interested scrolled to see if there was ai used and got disappointed now i kinda don’t care anymore
hello i don’t know you but i really love you
Can't even download it due to people absolutely flooding in droves downloading it too
Shit is WACK!
Hey, i can't download the game. Google drive has put a limit on it cus too many people have downloaded it
way too many redundent skills, should at least consolidate them.
Shut the fuck up
spent about 12 hours with this so far. and man. this project has a LONG way to go. even though it's just a demo for now, it's not a demo that inspires confidence. maybe it just wasn't ready to be available publicly.
the countless interlocked systems are superfluous at best and annoying at worst.
navigating most of the maps is a baffling chore, and a surprising amount of my playtime was spent trying to figure out how to leave whatever city that i was in at the time.
as far as character building and skills go, the sheer number of things to acquire and use is so much that it feels less like something to consider and immerse yourself into and more like a landfill of disposable menu options.
the combat balance is... uhhhh.... uhhhhhh.... its certainly is a thing.
and the bugs are so numerous and the code is so bloated with funny AI nonsense that i have no idea how much time it would take to bring this game into an enjoyable state.
you've got a lot of work to do, but it just might be possible to make sense of the madness. I hope it's possible, because the scope of it all is commendable.
Yeah I have to agree. As interesting as this project is, it's a little too hectic in its current state. So many skills crammed in that have no real use. Procedural generation is really messy. The lack of handcrafted content leaves the game feeling like a jumbled mess of vomit at times.
I still think there's a lot of potential. The dev just needs to focus on quality over quantity. At least 80% of the skills should be removed. Combat needs to be easier to follow, damage calculations seem all over the place and there needs to be more refinement and mundaneness to the world. This is meant to be sort of a life sim, so the world needs to feel like an actual world.
Is not a demo is a experimental alpha version with the sole objective of getting as many as bug reports as possible and gamebreaking things are expected from an alpha :D A proper demo will be published once everything will be straightened out, check the new version that was just released that fixes many things.
god speed and good luck
Also if you try the new version let me know about the revised combat system! It should be more fairer toward enemies since they can attack in group but still needs user reports to be balanced
Cooking tab is bug
I press K to open cooking tab but didnt see anything and the game froze pls fix it
add ukrainian language
looks cool. wish i could download it.
You can already download the alpha version, demo and early access coming in September
lovely job, keep up to good work.
Alpha version is out now on discord! Help me find any bug and crashes and turn this into a proper demo
I really like how the project looks, hope you keep developing it without any problems and everything goes smooth. If you could fix or send another discord invite link would be good, I want to follow this project news closely, aalso are you accepting any donations or something money related? No mind supporting this game
Here is the updated server link! https://discord.gg/nJhBbSMqDU
You can support me on Patreon (and get your name added ingame) https://www.patreon.com/nocoldiz or tip me on ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/nocoldiz i also accept donations in form of code since the source code is public ahah https://github.com/nocoldiz/hypernet-explorer-plugins
the discord invite in the blog post is dead, any permanent link?
https://discord.gg/nJhBbSMqDU
i will pay 100000000 moneys to become an omnigender hypercapitalist
keep up the peak !!!
will alchemy be a thing?
You state that "No generative AI image, video or audio assets are used in this project", but you used a generative AI image as the header of this page. That undermines your credibility even for those who accept your use of it as a coding tool.
EDIT: see Spessdude's reply. The skyscraper is AI generated, but it's pulled from a stock image site.
https://stockcake.com/i/art-deco-skyscraper_198545_35542
Ok so I did a quick google reverse image search on this and as it turns out the header image of the skyscraper does appear to be an edited version of this AI generated stock photo.
Now to the creator's defense, its very possible he just didn't know the original was Ai. He could've been searching up "stock images of skyscraper" and found that image and downloaded it without realizing it was Ai generated. He definitely should remove it and replace it with something not ai.
Thank you for looking into this. Agreed that it would be good to replace the skyscraper, but nabbing a stock image is far less gross than using AI to make one.
Yes i didn't know the original was AI: i searched "Art deco skyscraper" and found this stock image, i'll remake it manually in Blender since i also need a 3d model of the tower for cutscenes
It's kinda ironic you pretend to care about AI when people notice it, even though your entire project is coded with AI
Skyscraper is now remade in blender
be careful using ai to code your game
Did they use AI for this? :(
yeah they state that near the end last i checked
Theyre only using Ai for assistance in programming. All the artistic assets are still human made.
generating art from stolen art and generating code from stolen code is the same thing
you better never use a fucking compiler or a library then you dumbass mongrel
Wishlisted! Brother man i will pay any amount of money to get this game. Thank you for making such an interesting game and using AI efficiently instead of using it to sloppily make the game.
Fuck AI and fuck AI apologists.
If hell was real you would rot there for eternity.
I don't like using AI as much as the next guy, but using it as a tool efficiently is very different from making the game with just using AI. But hey, I hope u have a great rest of your day friend!
People lost their jobs because AI copied their work without their consent. I lost my job.
This is SO FUCKING PEAK
honestly? ill just pirate ts
Cringe
cry about it
the dev even refrences people pirating it..plus its ai coded slop so
My dream is to make an official "Pirate version" in collaboration with a releaser with exclusive content just for the pirate version.
think some others had the same idea and did it but i forgot who. im sure if youre looking you'll find smt
i will pay you even more if you do this. actually just have the pirate version come with some key file that can be copied into the paid one to unlock the content there too maybe, so i can throw money at you AND get more content :D
I think FitGirl has done this with a dev recently
maybe im just dumb but why would you pirate a free game?
Will I be able to fight Queen Elizabeth II in this videogame?
No since she is not a fighter but you will be able to fight Margareth Thatcher.
As an Argentinian, I am glad to hear about this
okay but can i kill her
So... Is there gonna be like... Subsystems for not doing capitalism?
The weather system don't involve capitalism and rain will fall on you regardless of your bank account size! Also the surfing minigame, i thinked very hard but these are the only two system i already implemented that don't involve money in some way.
you come to a simulation of a world that has fallen into magical capitalistic doomsday and you ask to remove the fucking capitalism? omg
You misunderstand. I wish to fight against the capitalism. Ideally with the goal of ushering in a stateless, classless, and moneyless society. If I am presented with a significant dystopian sandbox, I would at least appreciate the option to play as a character trying to resist the dystopia.