How Semblature is made

This page is a running account of how Semblature is actually built: the tools, the parts I make by hand, and specifically where I use AI and where I don't. It is itemised rather than a yes-or-no, and I update it as things ship. Where it is summarised more briefly elsewhere, this is the longer version and the one that governs.

Nothing in Semblature is generated while you play. There is no model in the game, nothing is generated at runtime, and the game makes no network request for content. Everything a player sees was made before the build and looked at by me.

The game has two views: an illustrated one, and a schematic board drawn from shapes and glyphs. Neither is the reduced version: nothing the illustrated view shows is missing from the schematic one. What goes into each of them is itemised below as it ships.

Last updated 2026-08-24. The game is in development, so entries marked "not yet shipped" describe how the work is being made rather than something you have played.

What players see

Store capsule and key artshippedno AI

The current store set (capsules, library art, icons) contains no generated imagery. It is set type plus the game's own board geometry, drawn by a version-controlled script the same way the game itself draws its boards. The wordmark is set type in the game's own serif. If generated key art replaces any of this later, this entry changes with it.

Revised 2026-08-24. An earlier version of this entry described a generated base image; the shipped set ended up fully procedural, so the entry now says that.

In-game character and object artnot yet shippedAI-generated

Generated locally, in one fixed style. I look at every asset before it goes into a build and edit the ones that need it. The assets players see most, meaning anything on a capsule, a screenshot, or on screen the whole time, get worked over by hand rather than used as they came out. Assets get listed here as they enter a build:

• (no build has shipped; entries added per release)

Musicnot yet shippedAI-generated

The plan is to generate it with Suno, which is a cloud service rather than something running on my machine, and then to choose, cut and arrange the results myself. Nothing is settled until it ships, and this line gets rewritten with what actually went in the build.

Puzzles, teaching cards and rule textnot yet shippedAI-designed

What a bench is, meaning its shape, what it teaches, and where it falls on the difficulty curve, was designed with an AI coding assistant under my direction. So were the teaching cards and the rule text, which I then edited.

What that design produces is not generated by a model. The bench you actually play is built from the design by a deterministic program on my own machine, and every single one is checked by a solver that proves it has exactly one answer before it is allowed into a build. Nothing is guessing at whether a puzzle is fair. That part is machine-checked, and it is the claim on this page I would least like to be wrong about, because the whole fairness promise rests on it.

Corrected 2026-08-24. An earlier version of this entry said that no model wrote any of this and that the statements and rule text were mine. The repository history says otherwise: the ladder of fifty benches, and the cards that explain them, were drafted with an assistant. The entry has been rewritten to match, per the last section of this page.

Store and website copyshippedAI-generated

I use an AI writing assistant to draft some of the store and website copy, then edit it. I am responsible for every claim made on those pages. That includes this one.

Studio mark and wordmarkshippedno AI

Not AI-generated, though "generated" is fair, because the Perpolita shell is drawn by a script rather than by hand. A snail shell is a logarithmic spiral, which is a closed-form curve, so the mark is computed from that equation and written out as vector: no tracing, no model, no drawing tablet. An image model was used early on to look at silhouettes before the shape was chosen; nothing it made was kept, and nothing it made ships. The wordmark is set in Fraunces and hand-kerned.

Who makes it

One person, me. Nobody else has been paid to work on Semblature so far.

If that changes, whoever it is gets named here, with a link to their own work. Not a line in a list of tools: their name, and where to find more of what they do.

What it's built with

Not everything here involves AI, and listing only the parts that do would give a strange picture of how the game is actually made.

• Unity 6.5The engine. The game's rules live in plain C# with their own tests, deliberately separate from anything Unity-specific.
• C# / .NETGame code, and the offline tools that build and verify puzzle content.
• The solverMine, and not a model. It proves every puzzle has exactly one answer before that puzzle is allowed into a build.
• AI coding assistantsUsed across the codebase, including on the game's mechanics. AI
• Local image modelsRun on my own hardware, for art. Nothing is uploaded to a cloud image service. AI
• SunoIntended for music. Cloud, not local. AI
• An AI writing assistantDrafts some store and website copy, which I then edit. AI
• Fraunces, DejaVuTypefaces, both open-licensed. The wordmark is set and kerned by hand.
• PythonThe art pipeline and the studio mark generator.

Valve's disclosure policy covers what ships to players and what goes in marketing, so the coding assistants sit outside it. They are listed anyway, because a page like this is worth less if it only admits the parts it has to.

Keeping this accurate

If something in the game is not accounted for above, that is a mistake rather than a policy, and I will fix it here. Email [email protected].

The same information goes into Valve's content survey, which Steam summarises on the store page.