How we build, and the AI in it
Last reviewed
Nobody requires us to publish this. We are doing it because a child talking to something that is not a person should know, and because a parent deciding whether to allow it should not have to find out by accident.
How this is built
We use AI tools heavily to make Sculklantis. Being straight about where:
We do use AI for
- Writing and reviewing the code that runs the world and these websites.
- Building and shaping terrain, structures and village layouts.
- Drafting the characters' personalities and the world's history.
- Research, checking our own claims, and catching our mistakes.
We do not use AI for
- Deciding anything about a child on the server — who is allowed in, what happens when something goes wrong. A person does that.
- Anything that touches your child's information.
- Publishing claims nobody checked. Everything on these sites is reviewed by a human before it ships, and where we were not sure, the page says so.
The characters are software, and they will say so
The world is populated. There are villagers who keep the lights on, work through the night, and hold conversations.
They are software, and nothing else
Computer programs driven by a language model. Not other children. Not adults watching. Not a person your child is talking to.
We build them to say that plainly, in the game, in words a child reads — not only on a page like this one, which no nine-year-old will ever open.
A guest gets one assigned to them, so a child arriving into somebody else's world has a character of their own to follow around rather than trailing the host. That is deliberate, and it is the part children like most.
What they can and cannot do
- They talk, in the game's chat. They do not have voices.
- They cannot leave the game, message anyone, or reach a child anywhere else.
- They do not ask for real names, ages, schools, or photographs.
- They have no memory of a child outside the world.
The filter, and its limits
Everything a character says passes through a filter on our own machine before it reaches anyone. No third party sees it.
The filter is not a guarantee
It reduces the chance of something inappropriate reaching your child. It does not eliminate it, and we are not going to tell you it does. Language models produce unexpected things, and any parent told a filter is airtight has been told something nobody can honestly promise.
What we can promise instead
Every line is written down where we can read it back. If something gets through, you hear it from us the same day — not whenever we happen to notice.
What it is all for
Fun first, and we are not going to dress that up. It is a game a father and son built to play with friends.
But the world is designed rather than assembled, and the design has intentions in it. These are written into the project's own design notes, and each one is carried by how the game works rather than by anything lecturing a child:
- You get what you earn — and there is more than one way to earn.Fighting is one route. So is building, trading, and helping.
- Other people's trouble is your trouble. The village notices when something is wrong and so, eventually, do the children in it.
- Your word is a thing the world checks. And mistakes do not end relationships — repair does.
- Leadership is more work, not more power.
- Trying is always safe. Only quitting costs anything. Failed attempts are free, on purpose, so a child will risk the thing they might be bad at.
The one from Bluey: warm, funny, no cruelty and no horror. Teasing points at what somebody did, never at who they are — and never at a child.
What we will never do with any of it
Trains anything
Nothing your child says goes into a model — not ours, not anybody else's.
Sold or shared
Not sold, not shared, not handed to a third party. There is nobody to hand it to.
Published without a separate yes
Playing here is not permission to appear in a video. See Children's privacy.
If you are not comfortable with this
That is a completely reasonable place to land, and it costs you nothing to say so. Tell us and we will take your child off the list. No argument, no persuading.
Bandy Strawn, an individual residing in New Hampshire, trading as Strawn Games, is responsible for all of the above. The fastest route to a person is the parent Discord linked from play.strawn.games.