This is a mod I made for the game “Caves of Qud”, a traditional roguelike set in the far, far future with mutants and psychic powers. I made it as part of a mod jam with the theme “Vignettes”. My initial inspiration was an interest in the “powered exoskeleton” item, as well as the item modification feature (wherein items could spawn with various modifications, like being lighter or insulated). In trying to think about how to combine that with the theme, I hit upon the idea of an ancient powered exoskeleton with a sapient AI created by a long-lost civilization, that had been left to rust in some ruins. Intelligent but unable to move due to its programming requiring a user of a now vanished species, it sat there through the centuries, eventually trying to figure out a way it could end its isolation, until it encounters the player. In practice, this takes the form of a randomly-generating encounter in a ruins zone with an NPC, that at the end of it rewards the player with a version of the powered exoskeleton item with a variety of item mods installed on it.

This was my first (and still only) mod jam that I’ve ever done. It was a spur of the moment decision - saw it was coming up and decided to to give it a shot. Considering that, I’m pretty happy with what I ended up making! I ended up especially enjoying figuring out how to write the exoskeletons initial dialogue - the idea was that it would be unintelligible to the player at first because it would speak in an ancient language, so I came up some made-up words that were based off of Latin to give the dialogue the impression of “this is what the language your character speaks was like a thousand years ago”.