Thornmere: The Founding Song
A free first-person party dungeon crawler in the style of the 1985 classics, with original content, chunky Amiga-era pixels and a synthesised chiptune score. Built as a demo project to test Claude Fable 5, with the code produced in Claude Code sessions.
Official site dgahagan.github.io, verified Nov 3, 2026. Linked as “▶ Play it in your browser” in the README of the developer's repository dgahagan/THORNMERE.
Rights holder / original work: The Bard's Tale (Interplay Productions / Electronic Arts, 1985)
The repository's LESSONS.md describes the project as “recreating The Bard's Tale (1985) with Claude Code”, and the README says the game's Legacy mode is “bit-for-bit identical to the classic rules”, with Remastered XP set relative to “the 1985 curve”. The game does not use The Bard's Tale's name; the README says all content (town, dungeons, monsters, spells, songs, items, sprites and melodies) is original. No source shows a licence or permission from The Bard's Tale's rights holders. (GitHub (dgahagan))
VibeGameDB lists this game only to document that it was made with AI coding tools. We do not host it, we do not represent the rights holder, and listing it does not mean it is licensed.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — official siteBrowserReleasedFree
Runs in a desktop browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
- View on GitHubGitHubReleased · Source code (vanilla JavaScript, no build step); package.json gives the licence as MIT, but no LICENSE file was foundFree
Download from the GitHub releases page.
Desktop · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Thornmere: The Founding Song
Thornmere: The Founding Song is a free first-person dungeon crawler in the browser, made in the style of the 1985 originals with chunky, Amiga-era bitmap graphics. The hedge-wizard Maldrec the Unsung has stolen the Three Verses of the Founding Song that ward the gates of the town of Thornmere against the fen-wights, and your party has to recover them from the Sunken Undercroft, the Howling Barrow and Maldrec's Needle, then sing the gates whole. You create a party of six at the Adventurers' Hall, shop, heal and level up in town, and explore textured maze dungeons step by step, with secret doors, spinners, teleporters, darkness and anti-magic zones, traps and riddle doors where you type the answer. Combat is ordered character by character against up to four monster groups and narrated line by line. There are three schools of magic with 84 spells, seven bard songs, more than 50 monsters and 60 items, an animated monster portrait window and a synthesised chiptune soundtrack. A Remastered mode adds an automap, saving anywhere, a shared inventory and reduced XP, while Legacy mode keeps what the README calls bit-for-bit classic rules. The repository's retrospective describes the project as recreating The Bard's Tale (1985), and the README says all of the content, from the town and monsters to every sprite and melody, is original. It is a demo project built to test the model Claude Fable 5: the README says the code, pixel art, chiptune score, maps, balance passes, tests and documentation were produced in Claude Code sessions, and the monster portraits came from a local image model. Played with keyboard or mouse; saves stay in the browser.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe README says Thornmere is a demo project built to test Claude Fable 5 when the model was new: 98 commits over a month (June–July 2026), with the game's code, pixel art, chiptune score, maps, balance passes, tests and documentation produced in Claude Code sessions. LESSONS.md, a retrospective written for the developer's team, says Fable 5 one-shotted the base game (engine, combat, magic, content and 27 passing tests) from a single detailed prompt; a later presentation pass on that model used up an entire Max 5x session plus $100 in API credits, and the work that followed (art regeneration, feature plumbing, adjudication) ran on Sonnet. Its closing line lists the models as Claude Fable 5 (greenfield, advisory) and Claude Sonnet 4.6 (production passes). Per the README, monster portraits, boss showpieces and interiors were generated by a local FLUX.2-klein image model and reduced to the game's 32-colour palette.
- DeveloperLESSONS.md: “The frontier model (Fable 5) one-shotted the base game — engine, combat, magic, content, 27 passing tests — from a single detailed prompt.” — GitHub (dgahagan)
Vanilla JavaScript (ES modules) and HTML5 Canvas with no dependencies, no build step and no binary game assets, per the README: the game renders to a 320×240 indexed-colour framebuffer scaled up 2×, every sprite is stored as text-grid pixel data, and all music and sound effects are synthesised with Web Audio from note patterns. Races, classes, items, spells, songs and monsters live in editable JSON files; maps come from seeded maze generation with hand-written specs for stairs, bosses and riddles; and the pure game core runs under node --test (53 logic tests plus art, audio and printable-manual suites). Per LESSONS.md, the project ended up with a Sonnet worker session, a human relaying guidance and spot-auditing the results, and a read-only Fable advisor session. The only bundled binaries are four OFL-licensed fonts.
- Engine / framework
- None (vanilla JavaScript)
- Languages
- JavaScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“Thornmere is a demo project built to test Claude Fable 5 when the model was new”Verification notes: Story, systems, modes, stack and AI use come from the README and LESSONS.md, read through raw.githubusercontent.com; github.com and the GitHub API did not answer our checks, so commit dates and stars are unchecked and no release date is known. The hosted game loaded on 4 Nov 2026 (English). The project's own descriptions call it a demo project and a tech demo, but the README describes a complete game with three dungeons and an ending. LESSONS.md calls the build “The Lay of Thornmere” and describes it as recreating The Bard's Tale (1985); we record this as a remake notice because the README says Legacy mode follows the classic rules bit for bit, while all names, maps, art and music are described as original. No AI share of the code is given, so none is recorded; the README says the code was produced in Claude Code sessions. Team size is not stated: LESSONS.md is written for a team and describes one human supervising the sessions. The developer's real name and location are not given. Nothing in the sources describes AI used during play; the README says the game needs no network access. The game was not played.
Development history
- June–July 2026
Built over about a month in Claude Code sessions (98 commits), per the README.
DeveloperGitHub (dgahagan)
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
Browser (official site)
Free in the browser with no install or account; saves are kept in the browser's local storage.
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: Concurrent players (site), Monthly revenue, Gross revenue.
GitHub
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: GitHub stars.
Sales & revenue (all platforms)
Browser game — there are no downloads to count.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| THORNMERE — The Founding Song (README) GitHub (dgahagan) | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| LESSONS.md — What Building “The Lay of Thornmere” Taught Us About Agentic Development GitHub (dgahagan) | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| THORNMERE — The Founding Song (hosted game) dgahagan (GitHub Pages) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) dgahagan | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
- Development period
- The README says the game was built in 98 commits over a month, June–July 2026; the closing line of LESSONS.md says “Built June 2026”. (GitHub (dgahagan), GitHub (dgahagan))
