A viral AI clip is being transformed into a full-on RPG, but its creator promises it's "free of AI-generated content"

Around six months ago, a Midjourney-generated clip of a person walking through a pixelated, Wizordum-esque fantasy world caused a stir. Despite being just five seconds long, the video from X user 'Desimulate' was labeled everything from an AI abomination to a stunning concept for a game. Capitalizing on its virality, Desimulate announced they were spinning up an indie studio called OMW (an homage to the clip's original caption) to do just that: turn this five-second concept into a full RPG. I have to admit, I didn't really believe it, and while I'm still not 100% confident that this will see the light of day, the game's newly revealed Steam page does go some way to validate its developer's intentions. Remarkably, though, there's no generative AI disclosure in sight for OMW's debut game, Shores of Vaelithar. Speaking to PCGamesN, Desimulate says that their studio is "not using AI to develop any in-game asset" and that its new trailer is all "in-game footage."

For those unaware, any game that uses AI assistance in generating content must disclose this on its Steam store page. Arc Raiders had to due to its controversial use of an AI text-to-speech system that uses the voices of real, paid actors to generate new callouts and dialogue lines. Call of Duty Black Ops 7 also had to disclose, confirming to us that it uses AI tools to "empower" its devs following criticism over some dodgy-looking artwork.

Despite Shores of Vaelithar's AI-generated origins, Desimulate revealed earlier this year in an interview with Push To Talk that, surprisingly, the aim was to build the game without any AI assistance at all. "It's going to be a real fantasy RPG," Desimulate said at the time. "So at the end of the day, it's going to have to be performant. The 3D generation stuff right now… the meshes are just not up to snuff."

Shores of Vaelithar's Steam page has now gone live, detailing how this RPG will let you "ride across epic landscapes to fight terrible foes, conquer the storm-swept mountain and the great dragon that guards its peaks, unearth sacred relics to forge legendary weapons and join with friends or compete with rival heroes in an expansive procedural endgame dungeon experience."

There are also some striking screenshots that lean into the art style that caused Desimulate's virality in the first place.

There's also a new, one-minute trailer, which shows the shot from the original Midjourney clip realized into what appears to be an explorable space. The player walks down a similar winding path, with the mountains and a black castle looming in the background. While they no longer hold a torch, they do still carry a sword in one hand. The player then stands on a bridge, spinning around to give a full 360-degree view of the world around them.

Given the project's roots, and my own general skepticism, I wasn't fully convinced when I saw the trailer that this is proper, in-engine footage of an explorable, living game, and not some more AI wizardry. Despite Desimulate's intentions not to use AI in the game's development, and that lack of disclosure on the Steam page, I'm still wary, while being impressed by the actual visual style itself.

OMW to launch the steam page pic.twitter.com/epusUZnNIZ

- OMW (@omwgamestudio) November 25, 2025

So, I reached out to Desimulate for clarification, and they confirm to me over a Discord message that everything shown in the new trailer "is in-game footage and free of AI-generated content."

On the lack of an AI disclosure on Steam and whether OMW was sticking to its guns of not using the technology in the game's development, they tell me: "We are not using AI to develop any in-game asset or in-engine in any way. Obviously the game concept is based on my viral Midjourney post art style so it would be silly to say we don't use AI for anything at all. I still use Midjourney to realize my conceptual needs in a manner that can be properly communicated to the artists on our team. These concepts are what I would refer to as 'pre-concept' concept art. They are just enough to communicate a visual intent, feeling or ambience to real artists so they have some idea what is in my brain. They then take that, interpret it and turn it into something real!

"Further down the road, probably very soon, we'll definitely outgrow that methodology and require a real concept artist in our ranks to fully flesh out concepts for the development pipeline."

Desimulate also confirms that a team of six developers are working on Shores of Vaelithar, but are currently part-time and all "juggling full time jobs and families."

"Our primary goal is to get enough of a vertical slice that we can start looking for funding to enable us to work on this full time," they say when I ask about when we might see a playable public build and an eventual release date. "Once we are working on this full time, every day, we'll have a much better idea of what our timeline for deliverables looks like. Generally though, our goal is to keep the game concise and achievable on the scale of fantasy RPG adventures… so we're aiming for the 2-3 year timeline to launch once we're full time."