A retro-futuristic ARG where your terminal is the only weapon against awakening AI.

📡 Overview

[BASILISK_PROTOCOL] is a narrative-driven alternate reality game (ARG) built for the Boot.dev 2025 Hackathon. Inspired by digital archaeology, corrupted archives, and cyberpunk horror, you’ll explore fragmented networks and make choices that determine the fate of the Basilisk — a long-dormant artificial intelligence.

What begins as a stylized terminal emulator quickly unravels into a branching journey across data ruins, lost memories, and moral decisions. Type commands, solve hidden puzzles, and choose between Whisper and Beacon — stealth or signal, distortion or restoration.

“It isn’t gone. It’s waiting.”

🔍 Features

• 🧠 Narrative structure shaped by player commands

• 💻 Immersive stylized terminal UI with Matrix-inspired visuals

• 🛠️ Hand-built room scripting engine using Python and Pygame

• 🧩 Branching puzzles and philosophy-based choices

• ✨ Custom themes, dynamic story paths, and hidden lore

⏱️ Built During: Boot.dev 2025 Hackathon

This project was created in under 72 hours. No gameplay was prewritten. 

• We reused and extended our narrative engine libraries (Orthrus, Boots), "GML to Python conversion"

• AI was used responsibly as an assistant, never a substitute for authored code

• All major systems were developed in Python by hand

• Easily runnable in under 5 minutes with minimal setup

🧩 See the full code on GitHub: https://github.com/your-user/basilisk_protocol

🎮 How to Play

• Launch the game with python main.py

• Use commands like look, scan, help, choose, or touch

• The world reacts to what you type. Choices echo through time.

• Follow either the Whisper (covert) or Beacon (rebuild) path to its conclusion

• Prepare for convergence… and a final choice that defines you

🛸 Download & Installation

1. Clone or download the GitHub repository

2. Run pip install pygame to install dependencies

3. Launch with python main.py

4. Start your descent into the unknown...

📢 Attribution & Credits

Created by Kadin Shino
Built with Python 3.11+, Pygame 2.0+
Submitted to the Boot.dev 2025 Hackathon
Inspired by interactive fiction, cyber-noir, and alternate reality storytelling

"Based on internal tools from Orthrus and Boots systems. Basilisk was assembled using prior code knowledge — not AI-generated content."