feral-processes
A Neuromancer/Tron-flavored game blending Pokemon (tame and battle rogue
programs), Palworld (compiled programs work your base for you), and Dwarf
Fortress (procedural world, needs simulation, configurable permadeath).
Single-player, built in Rust, with a graphical frontend sitting on top of a
simulation that stays fully decoupled from presentation. A display is
required; there is no text mode.
You explore the Grid, fight or decompile the rogue programs you bump into,
and build a base whose structures your compiled programs run for you while
you are away. Scattered across every zone are links down into the Stack
— procedurally generated frames drawn in first person, where the fights are
harder, the returns are better, and the place notices what you take from it.
Deeper zones double every wild stat, and the only way into one is a portal
you fund yourself.
- Tame and fight. Party-versus-party round battles with grouped enemies,
where only the front groups can reach you. Decompile a hostile to add it to
your roster; five can fight beside you at once.
- Routines. Abilities install into level-derived slots, come from species
kits, research, wild carriers or a Compiler's extraction, and some can be run
straight from the map as run-long buffs.
- Cronjobs and production chains. Post programs to structures and they
work tick by tick wherever you are. Machines feed each other by touching, so
a production line is a physical line across your base.
- Research and gear. A 19-node tech tree unlocks structures, benches and
recipes; 31 pieces of equipment across three slots, most made from what your
own lines produce. Gear and programs both fuse, up to three times.
- The Stack. Doors, sealed vaults, caches, breakpoints, faults, corrupted
ground, orphaned programs to adopt, and a seeded boss in the deepest room. A
Trace meter rises with everything you take and is what hunts you.
- A base that runs without you. Needs decay, cronjobs pay out and GC
Entropy Sweeps chip at your buildings while you are four frames underground.
- Permadeath or Forgiving, chosen per run. Achievements are the one thing
that outlives a run, and they pay out at the start of the next one.
- Moddable. Species, structures, items, abilities, achievements and
research nodes are plain
.ron files under assets/*/ — drop one in and it
is picked up next run, no recompiling. Difficulty tuning is deliberately
code, in crates/engine/src/tuning.rs.
Installing and playing
You need the Rust toolchain (Cargo); if you don't have it, install it with
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh. Then clone
the repo and cargo run -p feral-processes. The binary resolves assets/,
saves/, run_history.log and profile.ron relative to the checkout at
build time, so the clone needs to stay put even if you
cargo install --path crates/launcher to get feral-processes on your
PATH.
Start a New Game from the main menu, pick a difficulty, and press ? in
game for the complete control list. Each session gets its own save under
saves/, autosaving every 50 ticks; L from the main menu lists every save
and A opens your achievements.
Documentation
The full manual — every control, table, stat, recipe, and species — lives in
docs/manual.md. Beside it are seven charted stat sheets, one
per content directory under assets/:
| Page | Charts |
|---|
| roster.md | the 17 species — stats, habitats, taming and growth |
| items.md | the 46 items — the value ladder, gear by slot, recipes, drops |
| abilities.md | the 41 abilities — target against effect, families, what a hit costs |
| structures.md | the 20 structures — build costs, the production lines, rates, upgrades |
| research.md | the 19-node tech tree and what it really costs to reach the ends |
| achievements.md | the 13-rung cross-run ladder and the ceiling on what it may pay |
| perks.md | the 12 perks, their prices, and where each magnitude lives |
Each holds a transcribed copy of the .ron files it describes, so each
has to be regenerated when those files change: edit the table at the top of
the matching docs/*-gen.py and run it from the repo root.
Release notes are in CHANGELOG.md.
Tests
cargo test --workspace
