Concept Framework
“From the streets, a legacy rises.”
Cobblestone Legacy is a sandbox RPG with rogue-lite structure, set in a procedurally generated Victorian city teeming with life, danger, and opportunity.
You begin as a young orphan struggling to survive among strangers — and every decision, alliance, and betrayal you make slowly writes your story into the city’s memory.
The project aims to show that even a small independent team can build a living, breathing world from the ground up — a simulation rich with consequence and humanity, powered entirely by Godot 4.4 and C++ GDExtensions.
Design Vision
Cobblestone Legacy is not about scripted heroes or fixed roles.
It’s about survival, trust, and ambition within a city that remembers everything.
Every NPC, faction, and business follows its own logic and history — their actions ripple outward to shape the wider world.
The player is simply one life among many, trying to find meaning and belonging in an unpredictable urban sprawl.
Core Pillars
Survival
Life in Grimborough is unforgiving. Managing hunger, thirst, and exhaustion isn’t a side system — it’s the heart of daily existence. Every moment spent scavenging, resting, or taking risks feeds into a broader story of endurance and consequence.
Discovery
The city begins as a mystery — shrouded in fog and rumor.
You uncover it piece by piece: alley by alley, contact by contact.
Every playthrough brings new districts, new stories, and new dangers.
Growth
Skills evolve naturally through use. Stealth, crafting, persuasion, combat — each grows through lived experience rather than menus or archetypes.
There are no fixed classes; only the paths that choices carve.
Influence
Factions, merchants, and gangs form the beating heart of the city’s politics.
Reputation and trust shape opportunities: a favor can open doors that wealth cannot.
You can build alliances, spark conflicts, or walk the fragile line between them.
Story & Memory
The world reacts and remembers.
NPCs recall favors, betrayals, and shared events; rumors distort and spread; forgotten actions return when least expected.
No two stories unfold the same way, yet every one feels connected.
Systemic Highlights
- Survival & Needs — Every day demands choices between rest, risk, and reward.
- Exploration & Travel — The fog of war reveals a city built from procedural tiles, rich with random encounters.
- Skills & Specialization — Growth through practice, synergy, and persistence.
- Stealth & Crime — Stakeouts, infiltration, and daring escapes across rooftops.
- Quests & Rumors — Dynamic events seeded by relationships, faction needs, and local gossip.
- Crafting & Trade — A player-driven economy shaped by what’s made, stolen, or destroyed.
- Dynamic Society — NPCs with memories, routines, and ambitions that evolve across each run.
- Reactive Narrative — Morality and consequence woven into the world’s fabric.
A City of Stories
The city of Grimborough is more than a setting — it’s a character.
Its streets breathe through the people who inhabit them: beggars, craftsmen, guards, thieves, and nobles all driven by need and fear.
The player’s story is just one thread in a much larger tapestry.
Every action matters. Every rumor has a source. Every loss leaves a mark.
The Experience
Cobblestone Legacy is designed for runs lasting a few hours — each a self-contained story within the city’s ongoing evolution.
Some runs end in triumph, others in tragedy, but all contribute to the larger legacy the player leaves behind.
End goals are not scripted victories, but personal milestones:
- Rise from obscurity to influence a faction.
- Master your craft and amass quiet wealth.
- Reform the city from within — or plunge it further into chaos.
Cobblestone Legacy is, at its core, an experiment in systemic storytelling — where survival, morality, and connection forge narratives that no designer could script.