The premise is that a System from another universe has created a shell program to allow human gamers on Earth to remotely control a kind of golem on a world the System manages. (This allows the System to get around some annoying permission settings preventing it from intervening on the world as much as it would like.)
The interface is primitive at best, since it’s spanning universes, and coincidentally, it will look something like the famous “blue boxes” from LitRPG novels. :)
Because of relativistic time discrepancies, every action taken by the player occurs instantly, regardless of how much time passes on the remote world, and no time passes until the player takes an action. But it -is- a world, and everything the player does will have an effect on both the world as well as the player, and the world won’t wait on the player: things will be happening everywhere as the player takes actions.
I want the player to have as many interesting character and world progression options as possible, and to do that, I’ve ditched graphics entirely. As said, the interface will look something like a Unix shell, except that it will be mouse driven (and as comfortable as I can make it).
I’ve made a lot of progress, and am having more fun making the engine than I can ever remember playing a game, so if nothing else, that’s been worth it. :)
I’m hoping I can write multiple sorts of games in the engine, from the above sword and sorcery RPG, to a galaxy-spanning sci-fi ship-based RPG.