BLACK LEDGERA CITY REMEMBERS

AN EXPERIMENT IN AI-DIRECTED STORYTELLING

An AI director.
A city that
remembers.

Make your way in a 1950s mafia life sim where a local AI director creates new encounters—and the city keeps the consequences.

Discover the experiment

Single player. Runs locally. Every life leaves a mark.

BELLWETHER, 1953FIELD NOTES / 001
Inside Saint Agnes: the bar, booths and people of Bellwether in the development game
Saint AgnesCoffee. Contacts. An opportunity.
THE BLACK LEDGER EXPERIMENT
DEVELOPMENT PREVIEW

You start with a rented room.
What comes next is your business.

LOCAL AI DIRECTORA PERSISTENT CITYPERMANENT CONSEQUENCESYOUR OWN WAY UP

01 / THE REASON WE BUILT IT

A world with rules.
Room for improvisation.

Black Ledger exists to explore an idea: an AI director that can turn the state of a living game world into a story worth playing.

Your contacts, past dealings and the places you can reach give the director something to work with. It proposes new encounters. The simulation checks them, sets the stakes, and remembers what you do.

01

The city gives context.

People have relationships. Businesses have owners. Your campaign has a history. The director draws on that world.

02

The director proposes.

A new job. A difficult conversation. A different approach. Locally generated encounters give familiar streets new possibilities.

03

You make the decision.

Time, money, respect and police attention are real game rules. Choose your approach and live with the result.

The experiment is still evolving. Today, the director creates courier, collection and mediation encounters. Narrative coherence is an active area of development.

02 / FROM AN ACTUAL AI PLAYTEST

LOCAL AI
GENERATED ENCOUNTER

A disagreement
at The Mariner.

Two staff members. One shared work area. Neither willing to give way. Mara would rather settle it before somebody draws blood.

“I need you to hear both of them out and find a way to share the work area without turning this into a fight. It's a simple matter of scheduling and access, but they're both stubborn.”

An excerpt from a real Qwen3 14B encounter. The AI wrote the situation and alternative approach labels; the game supplied the stakes.

HOW WOULD YOU HANDLE IT?

A recorded encounter. Choose an approach to compare its stakes.

YOUR TIME60 min
PAY ON COMPLETION$55
ADDED HEATNone

A measured resolution. Completion earns 5 respect. Existing police attention can complicate the job.

03 / WELCOME TO BELLWETHER

Start with a room.
Build something worth losing.

The clock advances with your actions. Take your time planning the next move. The city will be waiting.

A name on the street.

Find work, build trust and earn respect. Buy property and businesses. Recruit associates and send your crew to collect, guard, repair or take risks on your behalf.

Nothing comes without a cost.

Negotiate with the families. Manage income, stock and security. Debts, raids and retaliation can turn yesterday's opportunity into today's problem.

Another life. The same city.

Death is permanent for your character. Begin a new life in a city shaped by the people, property and history that came before you.

Actual screenshots from the development build. Visuals, gameplay and balance are still being improved.

04 / YOUR FIRST DAY IN BELLWETHER

Every career
starts somewhere.

Follow the experiment. Try a development build.
Tell us what happened in your city.

Download artifacts from successful GitHub Actions runs (GitHub sign-in required). Public releases appear separately when published. Builds are development previews and currently unsigned.

WINDOWS x64macOS Intel · Apple SiliconLINUX x64 · ARM64