the bardo

The Bardo is a very early access online Rogue-like virtual world. Your class and race are randomly chosen on each character death as a reincarnation mechanic.

The architecture of the game is essentially that of a text based MUD, but with emoji and other UTF-8 glyphs used to create a "graphical" overhead map.

Additional game features:

-Fully procedurally generated world which regenerates as part of gameplay

-Heightmapped 2d terrain (uphill/downhill movement, fall damage)

-Modifiable tiles (carve into mountains, burn fields of grass to ash)

-Player buildings

-Player crafting

-Several dozen races & dozens of classes

-Hundreds of items

-Dozens of mob types with unique attack patterns

-Auction system

-Unique item rolls

-PVP

-King of the hill / Castle siege system

-Tax collection

-Outlaws, Playerkillers

-Much more and infinitely more to come in the future!

It is in extremely early access public alpha stealth release development, but you are very welcome to log in and poke around! As of 2026, I expect the game is around 2 years away from "release" status.

If you're interested in learning more, you can read the FAQ / Help thread at the bottom of this page or check out my posts on patreon.com/m

Thank you, and welcome to The Bardo!

(Note: You do not need the source zip unless you plan to run the project from inside the Godot game engine.)