CARVERN

CARVERN is an arena-style retro FPS where every file you have is an exciting new level!

Drag in any arbitrary file - a photo, a song, an application, a PDF - anything at all - its raw bytes become a playable level. The layout, game flow, architecture, colours, landmarks, even the enemies that hunt you: all of it is derived from the file you gave it. You have an endless supply of new levels to play!

You've probably seen the concept of "procedurally generated from a file" before, and know the common trick: hash the file, seed a random number generator with the hash, walk away. That throws the file in the bin and effectively keeps a single die roll. CARVERN doesn't do that. It reads the file and structures the level directly from its data.

CARVERN evaluates the file you gave it, measures how ordered or chaotic the bytes are, lifts the colour palette straight out of them, pulls readable text, and samples images or data structures hiding inside. Then it builds those findings into the world: your file's own colours wash across the walls, its own strings are carved into monoliths, its own image is backlit as a mural. A dense, high-entropy file cracks open into a crystal geode; an orderly one rises into stepped terraces; a run of pure chaos melts the floor into a lava lake. CARVERN responds to what your files are. Similar files carve similar worlds, but no two files ever build the same one. Your downloads folder is an exciting, brand new campaign.

What should I feed it?

Anything - anything you want. That's the whole point. The file's character shapes the world:

- Photos: a sprawling caverns lit by crystal growths

- Executables: cold mechanical foundries of metal and light

- Songs: pulsing chambers that keep time with themselves

- Dense, high-entropy data files: vast geodes that crack wide open

- Sorted, tabular data: rising stepped terraces and ledgers

- An entire folder: every file inside, back-to-back, as one campaign

Throw in your resume, save files, family photos, home movies, or random files you've downloaded over the years - and explore the vibrant world that they were hiding.

IMPORTANT: To be completely clear, CARVERN only ever reads the files you hand it and builds levels entirely in memory on your local system. It NEVER executes, modifies, moves, deletes, or uploads any input files.

CARVERN core features:

- 9 weapons 

- 28 enemy types

- No art assets (everything is procedurally generated)

- Destructible voxel environments 

- Quake-inspired fast-paced movement 

- Deterministic level generation from any file (allowing for effectively infinite numbers of levels)

- Fully-functional in-game level editor for crafting totally custom and intentional levels

Discord

Please do feel free to drop by my development Discord if you have any questions/complaints/bug reports/thoughts/comments on this game or any of the others I've made: https://discord.goober.gg/

Speedrunning

If you're interested in speedrunning CARVERN, check out the board on speedrun.com: https://.speedrun.com/CARVERN