The city-state of Aethel is powered by a giant clockwork heart that's winding down. A talented clockmaker apprentice must venture into the bowels of the machine to repair it before the city falls into eternal darkness.
At a glance
- Genre
- Steampunk · Adventure · Fantasy
- Format
- Playable interactive novel — narrated live by an AI dungeon master
- Length
- Open-ended — pacing scales to your choices
- Players
- Solo or 2–6 player multiplayer party (multiplayer hosting requires Library Pass)
- Difficulty
- Adaptive — survival mechanics tighten or relax based on your actions. Hardcore permadeath available.
- Access
- $12.00 (or free with Library Pass)
- Platforms
- Web (dovorite.com) and native iOS / Android apps
- Language
- English
How it plays
In The Clockwork Heart of Aethel, you create a character with a point-buy stat spread, then cast spells, wield enchanted gear, and shape the world with your choices. The AI dungeon master (GPT-4o, with Gemini 2.5 Flash as a fast fallback) narrates each scene, reacts to your typed or spoken actions, and calls for dice rolls when the outcome is uncertain.
Your inventory, gold, health, and 15 equipment slots update automatically from the narrative — pick up a sword in chapter one and the AI remembers you have it in chapter four. Food, rest, potions, and healing magic each affect survival in distinct ways, and difficulty adapts to how aggressively you play. In hardcore mode death is permanent; in standard mode you can rejoin the story through the Resurrection system.
What players say
245 players have rated this adventure. The community sentiment so far: