Iron Ark: Wasteland Chronicles

A post-apocalyptic text-based RPG powered by Google Gemini 3

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💡 Inspiration

"Can a Design student build a complex AI app with zero coding background?"

That was my challenge. I am a Design major with absolutely no Computer Science background. I am a solo developer with zero prior experience in this tech stack (React/TS). Instead of building a simple "Hello World" app from scratch, I chose the "Hard Mode": refactoring a complex, abandoned text-adventure project to run on Gemini 3.

I wanted to prove that with the latest AI, even a novice can tackle complex software architecture—or learn a painful lesson trying.

💻 What it does

Iron Ark is a post-apocalyptic text RPG where survival depends on your choices.

  • Dynamic Storytelling: The AI acts as a Dungeon Master, describing the wasteland based on player choices.
  • Survival Mechanics: It tracks HP, inventory, and status effects in real-time.
  • The Twist: It's built on a "Narrative-Instruction Separation" architecture designed to stop the AI from hallucinating game states.

⚙️ How we built it

The "AI-Native" Workflow. As a solo beginner, I didn't write the code line-by-line. I orchestrated it.

  • Archaeology: Used Gemini to read and understand the spaghetti code of the original project.
  • Refactoring: Instructed Gemini to rewrite the Logic Layer while keeping the UI components.
  • Prompt Engineering: Designed the "Narrative-Instruction Separation" architecture to force the AI to act as a consistent Game Master.

🤯 Challenges we ran into (The "Refactoring Hell")

The "Refactoring Trap" & Hallucinations. I severely underestimated the difficulty of "fixing" old code.

  • The "Antigravity" Effect: The AI tools often hallucinated fix after fix, breaking working features while trying to fix bugs. It felt like one step forward, two steps back.
  • Context Overload: Managing the massive state of an existing RPG overwhelmed the earlier context windows, leading to game crashes.
  • Solo Fatigue: Without a team, I had to be the PM, the Coder, the Designer, and the QA all at once.

🏅 Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • I didn't quit. Despite hitting critical bugs 4 hours before the deadline, I pushed through.
  • Successfully integrating the Gemini API into a React frontend for the first time.
  • The realization that Prompt Engineering is the new coding literacy.

🧠 What we learned (The Real Gold)

This project was a brutal crash course, but I learned more in 2 days than in 2 years of tutorials:

  • AI isn't Magic, it's a Co-pilot: You cannot blindly trust the code generation. You must understand the intent of the code.
  • Workflow Matters: I learned how to modularize prompts to prevent the AI from getting confused (The "Prompt Chaining" technique).
  • Resilience: I learned that a broken demo isn't a failure if you understand why it broke. I now have a clear roadmap for a true "Iron Ark" built from scratch, not just a refactor.

📢 Credits & Acknowledgements

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. This project is a remix and UI redesign based on the incredible open-source project DXC (Dungeon X Crawler) by MikuLXK.

  • The Original Masterpiece: The core logic and the brilliant "Narrative-Instruction" concept were originally architected by MikuLXK. My struggle to refactor it only highlighted how robust and sophisticated the original codebase actually is.
  • My Contribution: I focused on the "Iron Ark" UI redesign and attempting to migrate the AI engine to Gemini 3.
  • Respect: If you enjoy the concept of this game, please check out the original repository. This submission is a tribute to their work.

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