I Rebuilt a 1989 BBS Game in One Evening With AI

I Rebuilt a 1989 BBS Game in One Evening With Claude

Ember Wyrm is a browser RPG in the style of the 1990s BBS door games, inspired by Legend of the Red Dragon. I built it in one Saturday evening of conversation with Claude: the game engine, a robot player that balanced it before I played a turn, a phone-friendly interface, and original 16-color ANSI art. You can play it free at games.braintek.com.

If you dialed into bulletin board systems in the early ’90s, you probably remember Legend of the Red Dragon. LORD was a “door game”: a text RPG you played over a modem, a few turns a day. You hunted monsters in the forest, trained under a series of masters, flirted with the barmaid at the inn, and eventually went after the Red Dragon that was carrying off the town’s children. Then you came back tomorrow, because the game only gave you so many fights per day.

Seth Robinson wrote it in 1989, and at its peak it was reportedly played more than a million times a day across BBSes worldwide. I lost a lot of evenings to it.

On a Saturday night I asked Claude a simple question: is the source code available? By the end of the night I had my own version running on my phone, with pixel art.

▶ Play Ember Wyrm in your browser

Is the original source code available?

No. The original Turbo Pascal source has never been released. Robinson sold LORD to Metropolis Gameport in 1998. The company went quiet years ago, and the developer it later hired has said he cannot release anything without its permission. Robinson himself has spent years trying to buy the rights back so he can open source it.

There are community projects, including a Synchronet JavaScript rewrite and Legend of the Green Dragon, an open source PHP remake. None of them is the original.

I also asked whether the rights might be for sale and what they would be worth. As far as public information goes, they are not listed, the game makes almost no money today, and the obvious buyer is the creator himself. That settled it: we would build our own.

What did we keep, and what did we write from scratch?

Building our own also means it is actually ours. I told Claude this was just for me, not for sale. It still pointed out that LORD’s writing and characters are copyrighted whether anyone pays for them or not. So we kept the mechanics, which is what made the game fun, and wrote everything else new:

The village of Thornwick instead of the original town, and the Gloamwood for the forest
Eleven new masters, from Old Hob with his walking stick up to Master Corvin
48 original monsters across 12 levels, from Rabid Squirrels to Elder Wyrmlings
Three classes: Sellsword, Hedge Mage, and Footpad, each with a daily special attack
The Crooked Lantern inn, with Rowan the barmaid and Maren the bard
And at the end, the Ember Wyrm

The core loop is the one I remember: 20 forest fights per real-world day, gold and experience, better weapons and armor, one shot per day at your master, and death costing you the gold you carry. Once you kill the dragon, you start over at level 1 with a few permanent bonuses and your name in the Hall of Legends.

How do you balance a game before anyone plays it?

This part surprised me. Before building any screens, Claude wrote the game engine and then a simulator: a bot that plays the way a sensible person would. It fights, heals when it is hurt, buys gear when it can afford it, and trains when it is ready.

The first run showed a real problem. Healing cost so much that the bot ran out of gold around level 7 and got stuck there forever. Claude adjusted the healer’s pricing and the monster damage, then ran it again. Then the bot leveled too fast, so it slowed experience gain. A few rounds later, the bot was killing the dragon in about 17 game days, with a handful of deaths along the way. That is about the “come back tomorrow” pace the original had.

That is the kind of tuning I would normally discover the hard way after a week of play.

A battle in the Gloamwood: a pixel-art goblin above the combat log, with Attack, Ember Bolt, and Run options

How did the ANSI art get made?

The first version was pure text, styled like a DOS terminal: black screen, the classic 16-color palette, and a pixel font, with every menu option big enough to tap. It played well, but I wanted the art that made BBSes memorable.

So we added it. Every location got its own picture in the 16-color palette: the village square under the stars, the forest with red eyes glowing between the trees, the smithy’s anvil, the inn with its lantern. There are monster sprites, recolored so all 48 creatures look different. And for the title screen I wanted a red dragon drawn in the style of the old ACiD-era art groups.

I sent Claude a screenshot of a classic ANSI dragon from 16colo.rs as a style reference. It did not copy that piece. It drew an original roaring dragon head in the same spirit, using checkerboard dithering for shading the way ANSI artists faked gradients with ░▒▓ characters: rows of fangs, a glowing slit eye, cyan horns, and fire building in its throat.

The Ember Wyrm title screen: an original pixel-art dragon head drawn by Claude in the 16-color palette, above the game title

What changed after playing it on a phone?

Four Ember Wyrm screens: Thornwick Square, a forest battle, and Brannoc's Blades weapon shop before and after choosing an item

Tap to buy. Originally you hit “Buy” and typed an item number. Now you tap the item, see the price and trade-in value, and confirm.
One screen, no scrolling. Everything fits on a phone screen, and there is a graphics toggle if you want pure text.
Renting a room. I did not want to wait until midnight for more fights, so the inn now rents a room for the night. It costs about two fights’ worth of gold at every level: steep early, pocket change by the late game, which feels right.
Autosave. Your hero saves in your browser after every move, so you can close the tab and come back to the same hero tomorrow.

What did I take away from it?

I have been building software for a long time, so I know roughly what this would have cost me alone: a few weekends at least, and the art never would have happened. In one evening of conversation I got:

An answer to a legal and historical question I had wondered about for years
A balanced game engine, tested by simulation before I played it
A mobile-friendly interface that takes me straight back to 1993
Original pixel art I could not have drawn myself

What made it work was the back and forth. I played it, said what felt off, and it changed. That is the same way we work with clients on real business tools: describe the outcome, try what comes back, adjust. The difference is that the loop now runs in minutes instead of weeks. If you want to see more of what that looks like, the build apps with AI showcase collects the other projects, and our AI services page covers how we do it for businesses.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a wyrm to kill. Those masters are not going to beat themselves.

— Greg

▶ Play Ember Wyrm

Ember Wyrm is a personal project inspired by Legend of the Red Dragon. It is not affiliated with Seth Robinson, Robinson Technologies, or Metropolis Gameport, and it uses no code, text, or art from the original game.

Have something you have been meaning to build?

Ember Wyrm is a game, but the loop that built it is the same one we use for client software. Describe the outcome, try what comes back, adjust. If your Houston or DFW team has an internal tool or a manual process that never gets built, tell us about it.

FAQs

What is Ember Wyrm?

A free, single-player text RPG that runs in your browser. You hunt monsters in the Gloamwood, buy better weapons and armor in the village of Thornwick, beat a series of masters to level up, and eventually go after the Ember Wyrm. You get 20 forest fights per real-world day, like the BBS door games it is modeled on.

Is this the original Legend of the Red Dragon?

No. The original source code has never been released and the rights belong to someone else. Ember Wyrm keeps the game mechanics, which are not protected the way writing and art are, and replaces everything else with original content. It uses no code, text, or art from the original game and is not affiliated with Seth Robinson, Robinson Technologies, or Metropolis Gameport.

Did AI write the whole thing?

Claude wrote the engine, the interface, the balancing simulator, and the pixel art. My part was deciding what the game should be, playing it, and saying what felt wrong. Every usability change in the finished version came from a person playing it on a phone.

How long did it take?

One evening, including the research into whether the original source was available, the balancing passes, and the art.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Every menu option is a large tap target, each screen fits without scrolling, and there is a graphics toggle if you prefer pure text. A keyboard works too; every option has a letter shortcut, just like the original door games.

Where are my saves stored?

In your browser on the device you play on. Clearing your browser data or switching devices starts a new hero.

Can AI build software for our business the same way?

Yes, and the useful version is usually not a game. It is the report nobody has time to build, the spreadsheet process someone repeats every Friday, or the internal tool that never justified a full development project. The same describe, try, adjust loop applies.