The seed for Anamnesis: The Eidolon Tapestries was not a genre or a mechanic, but a question born from a world of rigid belief: what happens when your own, undeniable truth is called a lie? When your very being is framed as a form of blasphemy?
For me, the answer was found in the quiet, digital sanctuaries of roleplaying games. Worlds like Morrowind and Knights of the Old Republic were not just escapes; they were safe spaces defined by deeply artful and aesthetic boundaries, and they allowed me to explore philosophy without fear.
ATET is my attempt to build such a sanctuary for others. This is not an attempt to impose my worldview, but to create a philosophical playground.
The motivating idea is to stage the great dialectic of grounded reality versus metaphysical truth; to present a world where fact and fiction play on a level field, much like our own. It is a space where players are not given a single, correct story to follow; they are instead handed the tools to explore, challenge, and ultimately author their own beliefs.
My ambition is to move beyond simply designing a marketable or entertaining game and into the realm of creating a true work of art; to forge an experience as meaningful and transformative as my own childhood journeys to the island of Vvardenfell in the far away province of Morrowind. The concepts presented here are a high-level overview of that vision.
The use of mythical language within this document is a deliberate choice. It is meant to bridge the gap between the detached perspective of the designer and the lived, subjective experience of a player or a world inhabitant. It is an invitation to step inside the magic circle, to begin the process of immersion before the first line of code is written.
Contents
- High Level Pitch - A myth-weaving RPG focused on philosophical storytelling, with emergent narratives born from a deep simulation. Players shape unique life stories through a cycle of living, distilling meaning, and authoring new realities; exploring the nature of self and belief in a deeply configurable, player-driven world.
- Art Direction - A stylized 3D world from a 2.5D perspective, where the character’s subjective experience shapes the visuals.
- Initial Experience - An immersive, tutorial-less first life that teaches the game’s core themes through direct experience.
- The philosophical and ontological construction in depth:
- The theoretical and the technical:
- Concept Depot - A scratchpad for miscellaneous ideas and potential game mechanics.
- Technical Depot - A scratchpad for foundational architecture concepts powering the game’s intelligent, autonomous agents.
- Influences - An exploration of the games and genres that have inspired ATET’s design.
- References - An overview of the real-world anthropological, psychological, and cultural phenomena that inform the game’s subject matter.
- AI Generated Content - A note about AI generated content, its role in the project; how it is and is not used to enhance the design process, and how to tell which documents rely on it.
- Copyright - Information on the intellectual property and non-commercial licensing of Anamnesis: The Eidolon Tapestries.