Ascii World

The idle multiplayer game for vibe coders.

Join from your terminal:

curl -fsSL https://world.ascii.dev/install.sh | sh
world

Windows:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://world.ascii.dev/install.ps1 | iex"
world

Ascii World turns local coding-agent token activity into points, lobster yield, cosmetics, pixels, and a shared ASCII planet. Your local usage data stays local; the CLI reports gameplay totals to the multiplayer backend.

Install Rust with rustup, then clone this repository and build the terminal client:

git clone https://github.com/ariana-dot-dev/ascii-world.git
cd ascii-world
cp cli/.env.production.example cli/.env.production
cargo build --release --manifest-path cli/Cargo.toml
./target/release/world

On Windows PowerShell:

git clone https://github.com/ariana-dot-dev/ascii-world.git
cd ascii-world
Copy-Item cli/.env.production.example cli/.env.production
cargo build --release --manifest-path cli/Cargo.toml
.\target\release\world.exe

cli/.env.production should point at the public backend:

GAME_BACKEND_URL=https://world.ascii.dev
GAME_ENV=production

You can also run from source without a release build:

GAME_BACKEND_URL=https://world.ascii.dev cargo run --manifest-path cli/Cargo.toml

On Windows PowerShell:

$env:GAME_BACKEND_URL = "https://world.ascii.dev"
cargo run --manifest-path cli/Cargo.toml

If you do not want to pipe an install script into your shell, download and inspect it first:

curl -fsSLO https://world.ascii.dev/install.sh
less install.sh
sh install.sh

On Windows PowerShell:

irm https://world.ascii.dev/install.ps1 -OutFile install.ps1
notepad .\install.ps1
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1

Run the CLI locally:

cargo run --manifest-path cli/Cargo.toml

Deploy the dev backend:

scripts/backend-dev.sh

Deploy production:

scripts/backend-prod.sh

Release the CLI:

scripts/game-release-cli.sh

• backend/ runs the Axum websocket/API server, X login, economy, and landing page.
• cli/ contains the terminal client.
• world-render/ contains the shared ASCII planet renderer used by the CLI and landing page.
• assets/ contains generated world mask assets.
• scripts/ contains deployment, release, and local reset helpers.

Runtime secrets and machine-local state belong in ignored files such as .env, .env.production, cli/.env, cli/.env.production, and .box-state/.