About This Game

A fully branching narrative Roman Gladiator RPG across 12 chapters.

"You will bleed on the sand. The only question is whether you bleed for them, or for yourself."

A fully branching narrative RPG set in the blood and politics of the Roman arena. You arrive at the ludus with nothing but your origin and your will. What you become is written one choice at a time, and the story remembers every one of them. This is not a game about winning fights. It is a game about what the fighting costs you, and who is left standing when the crowd finally stops chanting your name.

Four origins. Four different men. Four different reasons to pick up a sword.

• The Slave. Born in chains. The arena is just another cage.

• The Conquered. A warrior brought low by Roman iron.

• The Debtor. Sold by the courts. Survival is a transaction.

• The Volunteer. You chose this. The crowd will remember.

Ludus tracks who you are, not just what you can do. Your character grows across three kinds of stat:

. Body and mind: Body, Nerve, Discipline, Cunning, Mind, Perception.
. Your standing in Rome: Fame, Crowd Favor, Roman Approval, Solidarity.
. Your soul: Defiance, Mercy, Rage, Humanity, Faith, Spirit, Cruelty, Despair, Obedience, Pride.

You earn these through choices, never through grinding. The soul stats are the hardest to master and the ones that matter most, because they decide which paths open to you and which quietly close. Two players can walk the same chapter and never see the same story.

577 historically grounded events. Over 1,800 choices. One arc that runs from your first morning in the training yard to the final question of what remains when the games are over.

19 endings across 8 major paths:

Triumph, tragedy, exile, martyrdom, escape, rebellion, political compromise, or quiet freedom. The Champion. The Martyr. The Rebel King. The Honored Exile. The Freedman. The Escaped. The Senator's Hand. The Survivor. No two playthroughs close the same way, and every ending is a consequence you can trace back to the sand.

Pen-and-ink illustrations:

Over 2,500 bespoke pen-and-ink illustrations, engraved in the style of Roman antiquity, carry every event and every choice.

An original score and ambient soundscape. Each chapter has its own musical composition and environmental audio, shifting from the dusty heat of the training ground to the roar of fifty thousand Romans to the quiet of a cell the night before everything changes.

Three manual save slots plus autosave. Explore different origins and paths without losing your progress. The chapter select lets you return to any chapter you have already completed.

What remains when the games are over? Wishlist Ludus: A Gladiator Story now!

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Ludus: A Gladiator Story was built entirely by one first time developer. AI-assisted tools were used during development, primarily to help with learning & troubleshooting programming complexities and technical implementation, and to a lesser extent to support testing for illustration quality and connecting narrative paths. Every piece of content in the game was personally shaped, rewritten, and approved by the developer. There is no live or procedurally generated AI content in the game itself.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Ludus: A Gladiator Story is a text-based narrative game set in ancient Rome. It contains the following mature content:

Violence. The game depicts arena combat, physical injury, and death. Violence is described through prose rather than shown graphically, there are no gore animations or explicit imagery. Players make choices that can result in killing opponents, witnessing executions, and suffering serious wounds. The tone is unflinching but not gratuitous.

Slavery and dehumanisation. The game's central subject is the experience of enslaved people in Roman society. This includes depictions of forced labour, physical punishment, humiliation, and the systematic denial of personhood. These themes are treated with seriousness and are core to the story's meaning.
Political oppression and systemic cruelty. The game portrays a society in which power is used to exploit and control. Characters in positions of authority behave with cruelty, corruption, and indifference to suffering.
Grief, despair, and loss of agency. Some story paths explore themes of hopelessness, the death of loved ones, and situations where the player has no good options. These moments are intentional and serve the narrative.

Alcohol. Wine and drinking are referenced in dialogue and prose as part of the historical setting. Consumption is implied rather than depicted.

There is no sexual content, drug use, or self-harm in the game.