Daoyou

What the project is

Daoyou, whose full Chinese title is Wan Jie Dao You, is an open source game built around a cultivation, or xianxia, setting and driven by AIGC. The readme describes it as an open source game project with high freedom text play and a cultivation worldview, and says the current repository is implemented as Hono plus a React single page app, replacing an earlier Next.js architecture. The stated vision is to build an open source skeleton for a cultivation universe. It is presented both as a directly playable text cultivation game and as a highly structured, AIGC friendly underlying architecture. The design pairs high freedom player input with AIGC feedback and backs it with strict numeric and combat models so that creators can build their own cultivation worlds on top. The readme lists three layers: at the play level it encourages players to shape characters through text while the AI generates feedback in real time for a different experience per player; at the system level it aims for stable, orthogonal, and composable systems so numeric balance and logic stay self consistent; at the presentation level it sticks to text as the interface with an ink wash style UI tuned for mobile. The repository reports 97 stars and 29 forks.

Core systems and tech stack

The game advertises deep AIGC integration across character backgrounds, combat narration, chance encounter stories, and item descriptions, with the current unified model being DeepSeek. Its combat engine is turn based on a timeline and supports divine powers, magic treasures, status effects such as buffs and debuffs, the five elements counter system, and damage pipelines. The cultivation system is described as rigorous, with complete realms from qi refinement up to tribulation, spiritual roots covering metal, wood, water, fire, earth, wind, thunder, and ice, plus cultivation methods, fate, and alchemy or artifact crafting. The UI uses an ink component library of 21 components for a pure text interface. On the engineering side the stack is explicit: the server uses Hono 4 on Bun, the frontend uses React 19 with React Router 7 and Vite 8, styling uses Tailwind CSS 4, the database is PostgreSQL with Drizzle ORM, caching and distributed coordination use Redis, messaging and real time broadcast use NATS JetStream plus NATS Core, authentication uses Better Auth, and AI uses the AI SDK with DeepSeek. The code is organized in a layered way with an Engine, Service, and API split, and the repository layout shows a Bun backend entry, a server directory, a React app directory, a shared directory for the engine and contracts, and drizzle migrations.

Community servers and licensing

Daoyou introduces a concept called Wan Jie, or the myriad worlds, which is an index of community run servers deployed from this open source repository by different maintainers. Each world can carry different gameplay, settings, and community culture. The readme shows a table with two entries: the official world maintained by ChurchTao, and a second world called Yun Meng Jie that adds a back alley black market, auction house, and spirit fields with a focus on player interaction, economy, and long term progression, maintained by a different developer. To be listed, a server must use a two to five Chinese character name, must not impersonate the official server or collide with existing names, must keep its full deployed source publicly accessible with attribution and license notices preserved, and must state its featured gameplay, maintainer, and any payment, advertising, or data collection. Servers that go offline for long periods, stop publishing source, or break the rules may be removed. The index explicitly says listing is not an endorsement of safety, availability, content, or operation, and warns users not to reuse passwords across servers. The project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0, which lets anyone share and adapt the material as long as they attribute the source and release derivative works under the same license.

Editorial conclusion

The repository is published under the GPL-3.0 license and its most recent commit was on 2026-08-26.