About the game
Waystation is a small experiment in liminal space. You describe a mall — any mall — and a language model dreams up its palette, its shopkeepers, and the small inventory laid out under fluorescent light. A 3D engine assembles the floor plan: sometimes a long quiet corridor, sometimes a 24-meter plaza with a single shaft of warm light through the skylight.
You walk through it. You can step up to the counter and talk to the people who run the shops, in your own voice, and they will answer you. They have small loyalties. They have opinions about what they sell. They are not customer service.
Then you leave, and probably you never see that mall again.
It is not a big game. It is one room and a thousand variations. The light is always at gloaming. There is always somewhere else to be.
About the builder
Built by Austin Brown — a software engineer who thinks too much about the spaces in between. Waystation is a personal project, made in the margins of a busier life.
If something here speaks to you, send a note. The mall is always open.
What it is not
It is not a chatbot. It is not a roguelike. It is not a leaderboard or a metaverse or a gallery or a portfolio site. It is a place to be inside for ninety seconds before you go do something else.
Credits
Music: 'Hiraeth' by Scott Buckley — released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au