«Concept»
Aincrad, floor by floor
No official game covers Aincrad’s full climb from floor 1 to 75. Existing games skip parts of the castle or place you alongside their protagonists. Aincrad Rewritten begins on the first day of the death game, with you in Kirito’s role.
The floor-clearing structure and two-year timeline remain. Your allies, relationships and decisions can break from canon. The Dual Blades and the ending are yours.
- 75floors, each with a design doc
- 13with canon source material
- 74floors beyond the opening chapter
- 1life. No respawns.
«Design Pillars»
What this game is
- You take Kirito’s role
- He doesn’t exist in this world. Nothing of his history carries over — his backstory, reputation and the Dual Blades are yours to earn.
- Choices change the route
- The floors remain, but your allies, relationships and decisions determine the path through them.
- First-person sword combat
- Lock-on, sword-skill combos, block and parry on a timing window, boss phase patterns. The camera stays in your eyes for every skill arc.
- Your route shapes floor 75
- The last floor resolves according to what you discovered on the climb and who is still standing with you.
- No HUD
- Strictly diegetic. No quest markers, no damage numbers, no health bars over enemies. HP, party status and menus render as SAO’s own system windows.
- Stylized, not photoreal
- Toon-shaded, hard outlines, a limited palette per floor. Anime-inspired, and scoped for a small team.
- Respect the tone
- Isolation, trust, survival. Not a harem power fantasy. The quiet floors matter as much as the boss raids.
- One life. No respawns.
- Death is permanent inside Aincrad. Survival depends on preparation, judgment and the people beside you.
«Clearing Route»
Roadmap
Work starts with a complete floor 1 and expands upward. Every floor already has a design document.
- I
Phase 0 · vertical slice
Floor 1, end to end
Build the Town of Beginnings through the first boss clear. This establishes how the game plays and how a complete floor is made.
- II
The journey
Expand through Aincrad
Build the floors supported by canon, then fill in the rest of the castle while preserving the branching routes.
- III
The final gate
Reach floor 75
Complete the death-game arc. Its outcome reflects earlier choices and the allies who survive the climb.
«Party Request»
Interested in contributing?
Seventy-four floors are open. Each has a design document, plus shared art and technical specifications. The project lead reviews submissions against those documents.
- Commissioned
- Work that blocks a floor from shipping, including enemy models, animation sets, environment kits and music. Payment follows agreed milestones regardless of the project’s eventual release.
- Volunteer
- Side quests, dialogue, props, ambient variation, tools and unfinished floor documentation. None of it sits on the critical path.
- Reviewed against a spec
- Reviews cite a written requirement. If none applies, the work is accepted and the requirement is documented for future submissions.