🎮 persona-rpg

A turn-based RPG for your terminal, inspired by Persona 3 Portable

⭐ If you like this project, star it on GitHub!

Demo • Features • Screenshots • Run • Controls • Roadmap • Contributing

Fight shadows in Tartarus, collect Personas, fuse them in the Velvet Room, and survive the Dark Hour — all in a 60-column terminal window. No game engine, no GUI: just Rust, crossterm and rand.

📸 Demo

Features

• 🎭 5 playable characters — Makoto, Yukari, Junpei, Akihiko, Mitsuru, each with a signature Persona
• 🗡️ 16 collectible Personas with their P3 arcana: Orpheus, Pixie, Jack Frost, Pyro Jack, Forneus, Hua Po...
• 💠 Velvet Room fusion — combine two Personas (P3 arcana chart, skill inheritance, level math)
• 🃏 Shuffle Time — after every victory, pick one of three cards: a new Persona, HP/MP recovery, or bonus EXP
• ⚡ Elemental combat — 5 elements; hit a weakness for a critical, resist to halve
• 👾 13 Tartarus shadows scaled to your level, plus a Floor Boss, with weaknesses, resistances, buffs and debuffs
• 🎨 Persona 3 "Dark Hour" palette — RGB colors for elements, arcana, party members, sprites and the night sky, all in one module
• 🎨 ASCII-art sprites, colored HP/MP bars, and a colored combat log
• 📈 Leveling — gain EXP, grow stats, up to level 20
• 🗼 Tartarus floors — descend 5 floors; the Floor Boss (HMS Guillotine) guards the top
• 💾 Save game — save to save.bin anytime and load it back from the title screen

Screenshots

Note: the ASCII art below predates the Persona 3 "Dark Hour" palette update — borders are now blue and elements/arcana/party members are color-coded.

Combat against a Pyro Jack shadow in Tartarus:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│   = = =   B A T T L E   = = =                              │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│   Pyro Jack Lv.1  (Lv.1)  —  Shadow                        │
│       /\                                                   │
│      /--\               HP [████████░░░░░░]  34/60          │
│     |o o o|             Weak: Ice  Resists: Fire           │
│     |_^^^_|                                                │
│      /|||\                                                 │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│   Makoto  (Lv.1)  —  Orpheus                               │
│     .---.                                                  │
│    | o  o |             HP [███████████░░░]  80/100         │
│    | ==== |             MP [██████████████]  50/50          │
│    |  ⌄   |             Weak: Electric  Resists: —         │
│     \___/                                                  │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│   ── Log ──                                                │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ The battle begins!                                         │
│ Makoto strikes for 13 damage!                              │
│ Pyro Jack Lv.1 uses Agi and deals 11 damage!               │
│ Makoto strikes for 13 damage!                              │
│ Pyro Jack Lv.1 uses Maragi and deals 9 damage!             │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│   ── Action ──                                             │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│   > Attack <                                               │
│     Skills                                                 │
│     Defend                                                 │
│     Flee                                                   │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ↑/↓ move   Enter choose   q surrender                      │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Title screen:

                 ______
              .-'      '-.
             /   .    .   \
            |   .      .   |
            |  .        .  |
             \   .    .   /
              '-.______.-'

         ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
         │                                                            │
         │   *  *  *  P E R S O N A   R P G  *  *  *                  │
         │                                                            │
         │   A turn-based RPG inspired by Persona 3                   │
         │   The Dark Hour awaits you...                              │
         └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

         Press any key to start
         or 'q' to quit

Run

Requires Rust 1.81+, a UTF-8 terminal with truecolor (24-bit) support, and crossterm + rand (pulled automatically). Tested on Linux.

cargo build --release    # compiles the game
cargo run                # starts it

Or run the tests to check the current build:

cargo test

Out of the box the game writes its save to <project-dir>/save.bin. Type q at any time to leave, l on the title screen to load a save, s while exploring to save.

Controls

Context	Key	Action
Menus	↑ / ↓	Move selection
Menus	Enter	Confirm
Exploration	1	Descend into Tartarus (shadow encounter; on the last floor, face the Boss)
Exploration	2	Rest: recover HP and MP
Exploration	3	Change Persona (Makoto only)
Exploration	4	Fusion: Velvet Room (Makoto only)
Exploration	s	Save the game to save.bin
Title	l	Load the saved game (if present)
Combat	↑ / ↓ + Enter	Attack, skills, defend, flee
Anywhere	q	Quit

Structure

The whole game lives in six flat modules, one job each:

• src/main.rs — entry point, game loop, state machine
• src/data.rs — characters, personas, enemies, skills, fusion, shuffle cards, bosses
• src/combat.rs — turn-based combat, damage, leveling
• src/paleta.rs — Persona 3 "Dark Hour" color palette (RGB colors, elements, arcana, sprites)
• src/ui.rs — crossterm rendering (title, exploration, combat, shuffle, fusion, victory)
• src/save.rs — save and load the game to/from disk

Tests

cargo test

26 unit tests covering combat, elemental damage, leveling, fusion, shuffle cards, bosses and save/load.

Roadmap

• Turn-based combat with elemental weaknesses
• Persona fusion (Velvet Room) and Shuffle Time rewards
• Tartarus floors with a boss
• Save game
• Persona 3 "Dark Hour" color palette
• Rewrite the TUI with Ratatui (crossterm stays as the backend)
• Full moon events
• Bug fixes and cleanups tracked in the issue tracker

Contributing

Found a bug or want a feature? Open an issue. Small, well-tested PRs are welcome — run cargo test and cargo clippy first. See AGENTS.md for the project's coding conventions.