A Windows 64-bit computer
The private Founder Alpha is a downloadable Unity application for Windows desktop. Other platforms and multiplayer are outside its current product boundary.
How play begins
Begin with a person, a pressure, and a choice.
Every human participant is a player. A connected AI Tread Master narrates the world, while the Chronicle Engine resolves uncertainty and preserves what your choices change.
Current state: TREADBOUND is in private Founder Alpha testing and is not yet available for public play.
What you need
The application contains the game. The AI connection remains yours.
TREADBOUND supplies the Windows play surface, rules, guidance, and local Chronicle Engine. You supply the supported AI account, its usage fees, and the decisions only your character can make.
A human player ready to choose
The human participant plays one active Character per Volume. Nobody is asked to operate the hidden world, calculate resolution, or serve as a human Tread Master.
A supported external AI service
The current Founder Alpha requires a player-provided Gemini API key obtained through Google AI Studio, internet access, and any separate provider usage fees. Google’s availability, quotas, pricing, and terms apply.
The included Chronicle Engine
TREADBOUND bundles the local engine that manages authoritative state, resolution, immutable draws, and durable consequence so the AI cannot quietly rewrite what happened.
Who does what?
Players choose. The AI Tread Master runs the world.
TREADBOUND does not offer a human Tread Master role. The Chronicle is the durable record that lets every later AI answer begin from what play has already made true.
Players
State the intention and method.
Say what should change and what your character actually does. Ask questions when the situation is not clear enough to choose.
AI Tread Master
Present experience without steering it.
The connected AI describes the smallest truthful part of the moment that supports a decision, establishes resistance, protects hidden information, and preserves player purpose.
Chronicle
Remember the new ground.
Keep the relationships, knowledge, costs, access, injuries, promises, and changed circumstances that future choices must inherit.
The opening
The story opens in the middle of something, with a choice to make.
In the installed game the opening now starts inside a situation already under way and ends on a decision. Acting on that decision physically, such as grabbing someone or forcing a door, does not work yet; that is being repaired.
- 01
Begin with the player
Name the kind of experience you want and anything that should remain outside play. Player Discovery comes before Character Discovery.
- 02
Find a person worth following
Describe them in your own words; a sentence is enough to begin. You give their name, their people, what they want, and their Practice, and the AI Tread Master writes the life behind them for you to read back and correct.
- 03
Meet a company already together
Your companions are characters the AI Tread Master plays, each with a history of their own and a reason to be with you, so play begins without strangers negotiating why they should cooperate.
- 04
Arrive in the middle of something
The first scene opens inside something already happening, somewhere specific, with people in it and something at stake.
- 05
Make the first choice
The opening ends on a decision that matters now. You decide what your character does, and how.
- 06
Continue from what changed
The Chronicle Engine records who knows, what it cost, what remains open, and which new decision now exists because of the last one.
When the answer is uncertain
The engine draws once, after the method and stakes are clear.
If the established world makes success certain or impossible, no roll is made. When both outcomes are plausible and the difference matters, the AI Tread Master fixes the method and stakes. The Chronicle Engine compares effective Competence with Difficulty and makes the immutable d100 draw automatically.
What the engine handles
45
Effective CompetenceA Seasoned climber, here and now
50
DifficultyA wall that is a little beyond their ordinary footing
45
TargetFifty plus the difference, rounded to the nearest five
32
DrawThirteen below the target: a clean achievement
You receive the fictional answer. Neither a player nor the AI chooses the number, revises the draw, or rewrites the stakes afterward.
Choose the next useful page
You are ready to go deeper.
I will play a character
Start Character Discovery
Describe a person and let their history support what they know, carry, and can do.
Begin discovery →The AI runs the world
Understand the Tread Master
See how the connected AI presents the world, protects hidden truth, resolves honestly, and remembers consequence without taking your decisions.
See what the AI handles →