Wyvern

I started building Wyvern in 1995, while still at Geoworks, as a home side project. I was inspired by old-school MUDs, RPGs like the Ultima series, and arcade games like Gauntlet. I built Wyvern as a user-extensible platform, so nearly all the content was created by volunteer "Wizard" world builders. That's where my obsession with Platforms originated.

Wyvern is an unusual game: a top-down, old-style, 2D graphical view, juxtaposed with a text-only console that spews waterfalls of text. Wyvern's biggest downfall, the mistake I've made throughout my career, is overestimating people's ability to read. I made some improvements when I ported it to mobile, but fundamentally, the game has always needed AI. And that's why I think its revival will be amazing.

Wyvern is deeply beloved by its old-timer player base. It's had loud years and quiet years — right now we're in a sleepy period, while I work on Gas Town and other projects. But I expect a glorious revival once AI can help me achieve all the goals I set out to achieve originally. Wyvern is a timeless and awesome idea, one that I fully intend to bring back to full life soon. Already working on it.

If you add up everything else on this site except for music — the countless essays (many internal ones weren't ever published publicly), podcasts, talks, Gas Town, the Vibe Coding book, everything, Wyvern completely dwarfs it in terms of how much of my life it has consumed. My only long-running project that probably still has Wyvern beat is my music, but that's mostly for me.

Here are some rough numbers to show the rough scope of the game, which I am working on open-sourcing asap:

500K	lines of hand-written code — no framework generating it for me
4M	lines of hand-authored content — areas, items, monsters, lore
10k	reachable maps
50+	major quest areas with elaborate quests
60	major contributors over the years — the volunteer “Wizards” who built worlds
100K+	players since launch
365+	days my character Rhialto has spent logged in — more than a full calendar year of 24-hour days online
~15K	hours of my own time in it since 1996, easily
$5K	a month, at the peak, from a single devoted “whale”

Wyvern is not something I'm giving up on. Now that AIs can help, I'm going to power through my multi-year backlog, and finally be able to accomplish everything I ever wanted for the game. Which was a lot! Nevertheless, I'm super proud of everything I've accomplished in Wyvern, and of how many people have been happy playing it over the years.

Wyvern was profiled in Game Informer in 2002 — a full right-side column in the “Mod World” feature on p. 153. Read the article (scan + transcription), or see the cover of the issue.

Wyvern picked up Best Game and the Grand Prize in a 2002 mobile-gaming competition (the Insignia Solutions / JPDA orbit). I still have the certificate; we're trying to track down the official write-up.

Wyvern is a 2D tile-based graphical MUD, inspired by games like LP Muds, Ultima IV, Crossfire, Gauntlet (the arcade game), and roguelikes like Nethack.

Because of the simple graphics, Wyvern is a deep, rich, sophisticated game, with classes, guilds, races, a rich economy, and an incredibly varied, anachronistic landscape for adventuring.

The game is fast-paced, real-time, multiplayer up to 100-200 players per server (good for the industry), and features hundreds of different kinds of monsters, and thousands of treasures.

Wyvern is highly mobile-friendly after a major overhaul from 2017-2020. Mobile players have made it all the way to the Hall of Fame (level 25) and a few even to Demigod (level 50).

The game is a labor of love. It's the game I always wanted to play. It inspires fierce loyalty in its long-time players, some of whom are hanging out in the game or Slack channels even now, as you read this. And Wyvern will soon experience a huge boost when AI can finish all the stuff it needs. Stay tuned!

There is more information at ghosttrack.com, but this is the kind of game that you learn by playing it. Available for Steam, iOS, and Android.