About this game
Code Story · Promise of the Star Lantern is a Chinese pixel narrative adventure and also a playable vibe coding introductory tutorial. The story follows Buxiang, who can't write code, and AI partner Xiao A as they take on the "Fix Guanfan" commission to repair the milk tea shop's ordering system: clarify the owner's needs, straighten out the kitchen steps, investigate orders that can't be delivered, and let customers outside town open the ordering page. The game includes maintenance commissions spanning five chapters, from Idea Workshop, Network Town, AI Research Institute, Engineering Workshop to Launch Pad, with 27 main areas linking the development process; 44 sets of interactive exercises and challenges cover arranging recipes, organizing requirements, checking messages, simulating terminals, determining permissions, etc.; 42 main terms and 6 hidden terms are collected in the encyclopedia as the story progresses. Star Lantern Town has 18 enterable interiors, 12 original residents, and 54 object stories, plus about 190 light interactions along the way such as cats, chickens, ducks, butterflies, flower beds, and benches. The code, orders, terminals, and deployments in the game are all teaching simulations; playing does not require connecting to AI services or providing an API Key. For controls, on PC use arrow keys or WASD to move, Shift to run, Space or Enter to talk/confirm, Q/C to open the travel journal and encyclopedia, Esc to pause and save; on mobile use the arrow keys, A button, and run button, with handheld-style buttons in portrait mode. Progress is saved on the current device and browser, and you can manually save, export, and import JSON backups to migrate to another device. Supports Simplified Chinese, single-player, no account required, available on PC and mobile.
