Miserable Ape Studios builds deterministic games powered by language models that control story and emotion in real time. We design for controlled unpredictability — stable game worlds that safely host probabilistic AI behavior.
Blightwood, our debut title, is both a grimdark RPG and a sandbox for testing narrative intelligence. It logs every decision, creating replayable, auditable data useful for both storytelling and research.
Core Concept
- Deterministic Engine: A reproducible world—same inputs yield same results.
- Digital Story Director (DI): A bounded LLM layer guiding dialogue, pacing, and tone within fixed rules.
- Observability: Every action, state change, and AI decision is logged for replay and analysis.
- Human Oversight: Writers and designers remain in the loop to guide and correct outcomes.
Why It Matters
Most “AI narrative” systems are random and unrepeatable. Our approach generates structured, testable data, making narrative reasoning measurable. It bridges entertainment and research without pretending AI interpretability is solved.
We don’t seek perfect stability — we embrace black-box uncertainty and engineer around it.
Product Strategy
- Blightwood — a standalone grimdark RPG showcasing the system.
- Engine Licensing — deterministic engine + DI API for partner studios.
- Narrative Trace Data — anonymized session logs for academic and R&D use.
- Internal R&D — refine our own Director Models using real gameplay data.
Company Doctrine
- Determinism first — no hidden randomness.
- Uncertainty contained — every black-box action is logged and bounded.
- Writers and engineers co-own the process.
- Transparency by design — replayability and reproducibility are mandatory.
- The goal isn’t to remove chaos, but to understand and use it.
Realistic Outlook
We don’t expect full model transparency or reliable self-alignment within a decade. Instead, MAS builds infrastructure to study, sandbox, and refine unpredictable systems safely — one deterministic world at a time.
Positioning
Miserable Ape Studios = Auditable Narrative AI.
We make games that double as
controlled experiments in digital storytelling.
Our worlds stay fixed, so intelligence can move freely — and we can learn from every step.