Short Stories Are Taking Shape

Update 0.3.0 pushes AnomalyNest further toward something I’ve wanted for a long time: AI roleplay where a story can have an actual structure, hidden truths, discoveries and progression — without putting the entire mystery into the AI prompt from the beginning.

This update is still part of the experimental phase of Short Stories, but several important systems are now working together.

🗺️ Mystery Map improvements

The Mystery Map is becoming more than a visual editor.

Creators can build connections between:

locations → items → discoveries → locked areas → final objectives

The game now understands more ways for locations to become discoverable.

A path from a location you have already visited can reveal where you are able to travel next. But locations behind locked progression remain hidden until the required condition is met.

Items can also reveal new locations.

That means creators can decide whether a place should be:

visible naturally through exploration
or
discovered only after finding a specific clue

The minimap and journal now follow the same logic.

This was tested on two very different stories: a fantasy adventure and an urban mystery. Both can now be completed through the Mystery Map without relying on story-specific hardcoded rules.

🔒 Hidden Secrets for lore

Side characters, locations and factions can now have a new optional field:

Secret

This is information the player should not know yet.

Unlike the normal description, the Secret is never permanently injected into the model just because an entry is marked as Always in memory.

It only enters the prompt when that lore entry becomes relevant to the current scene.

And even then, the model receives rules about who actually knows the secret.

A side character may know the truth and deliberately hide it, lie about it or give half-truths.

A location or faction secret can remain completely unknown to everyone currently in the scene.

The main character is also explicitly prevented from casually referencing hidden knowledge in dialogue, narration or internal thoughts.

This makes it possible to build actual mysteries without the AI spoiling the answer in the first few messages.

🧠 Better side-character memory

Side characters now stay relevant longer after appearing.

Their description remains available to the model for 12 messages after their last mention, while locations and factions continue using the shorter 6-message window.

This helps secondary characters feel like they are still present in a scene instead of suddenly disappearing from the model’s awareness.

🔎 Smarter keyword detection

Lore triggers now match whole words instead of substrings.

So:

Moth no longer activates from mother.

Dain no longer activates from disdain.

Sera no longer activates from miserable.

Plural and possessive forms still work normally.

Small change, but very important once stories start containing dozens of characters, locations and clues.

📖 Journal & exploration fixes

The story journal now understands that progression does not always begin with an item.

Previously, locations were mostly discovered when an item pointed toward them. That accidentally worked for some stories but caused others to get stuck immediately.

Now paths, unlocked connections and item discoveries all contribute to exploration.

The journal can correctly suggest the next available step without revealing things the player has not discovered yet.

Generic story instructions were also cleaned up so they no longer contain examples tied to one specific test story.

🎒 Picking up multiple items

A small quality-of-life improvement that feels much better in play.

If several items are lying on the ground, you no longer need to send one message for every single item.

Clicking multiple objects builds one natural action:

>I pick up the Rusty nail from the ground.

becomes:

>I pick up the Rusty nail and the Empty bottle from the ground.

and with more items:

>I pick up the Rusty nail, the Empty bottle and the Feather from the ground.

The engine processes all selected items from that single message.

Duplicate clicks are ignored, while other interactions such as giving or combining items remain separate actions.

🧪 Story-system testing

The new systems have now been tested against very different kinds of cards rather than being built around one specific adventure.

One test focuses on exploration and fantasy progression.

Another is an urban investigation built around hidden memories, witnesses, restricted locations and discovering what actually happened.

The goal is for creators to build mysteries, horror stories, investigations, escape scenarios, adventures and other structured experiences using the same underlying system.

The current automated suite is now at 244 passing tests.

🚧 Still experimental

Short Stories are not finished yet.

The current work is about building the underlying rules so the AI does not have to magically remember every secret, clue and progression condition by itself.

The direction is:

the engine tracks what happened
→ the Mystery Map defines what can happen next
→ the AI handles the character, atmosphere and storytelling

Rather than asking the model to control everything at once.

And that is the part of 0.3.0 I’m most interested in pushing further.

More experiments coming.

AnomalyNest

🌐 anomalynest.com
💬 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/DPrbfr2xax