r/HollowRealization • u/Downtown_Chemical771 • 9d ago
[Mod Release/Update] SAO HR Death Game — A Persistent Living World Overhaul for Hollow Realization
Hey everyone!
Some of you may remember my original post about an ambitious Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization overhaul inspired by Aincrad’s Death Game.
At the time, most of the Living World was still a plan. The mod has since been released, and many of the systems I originally described are now playable. I wanted to make a new post that accurately explains what the project has become, what is available now, and what I’m currently developing.
What is SAO HR Death Game?
SAO HR Death Game: REALIZED is a single-player overhaul designed to make Hollow Realization feel more like a dangerous, persistent SAO world.
It is not an online server or an MMO conversion. Instead, it makes the game’s NPC adventurers behave more like other players sharing the world with you: keeping their identities, forming parties and Guilds, progressing, traveling, and pursuing their own activities.
The objective is to make Aincrad feel populated by adventurers who have lives beyond standing in town waiting for the player.
See it in action
Gameplay showcase:
I Turned SAO: Hollow Realization Into a Living Death Game
Downloads and development updates:
Reignenn | Patreon
A free Community Edition is available alongside the more customizable Supporter and experimental Beater editions.
Systems currently released
Death Game rules
- Death Mode permanently ends the current player character.
- A newly generated successor takes their place.
- Successors receive their own identity, appearance, equipment, inventory, and history.
- Character replacement integrates with the game’s native save system.
- Level One Reset and Regular Death rulesets are also available for players who want the Living World without permanent player death.
Persistent adventurers and parties
- NPC adventurers retain their names, levels, builds, progression, parties, and recent locations.
- Familiar adventurers can return on later visits instead of being replaced whenever a map loads.
- Parties form around compatible levels, relationships, and shared history.
- Persistent population reserves help the world replenish itself as adventurers grow stronger.
- The adventurers shown on the map remain consistent with the parties encountered in the field.
Living towns
- Town and Inn populations change naturally between visits.
- Busy districts such as the Teleport Gate Plaza and Market Street tend to attract larger crowds.
- Quieter districts can have lighter populations.
- Town settings can support limits of 90, 120, 150, or 180 residents in the customizable editions.
- Crowds can grow dynamically or remain consistently full.
Living NPC Guilds
Supporter and Beater editions include persistent NPC Guilds with:
- Unique names and emblems
- Members and membership history
- Guild Leaders, Assistant Leaders, Recruiters, Raid Captains, Rescue Captains, and other billets
- Individual goals and recruiting styles
- Guild levels, rankings, experience, and progression
- Changing Online and Offline attendance
- Persistent locations and operations
- Guild-preferred party formation
- Native Guild-menu integration
- Guild names and billets displayed over affiliated adventurers
These are functioning NPC organizations, not randomly assigned cosmetic labels.
NM and HNM operations
The Beater Edition adds the most experimental Living World behavior:
- Parties select Named Monsters appropriate for their strength.
- Veteran parties can organize for major HNM encounters.
- Up to several separate parties can pursue the same boss.
- Parties may begin nearby or travel across the field as reinforcements.
- Guild operations can involve Guild members, unaffiliated adventurers, and allied outside parties.
- Multi-party battle displays preserve the real party cohorts participating in the encounter.
Population and combat overhaul
- Increased allied adventurer density
- Increased enemy density
- Role-based field-party construction
- Expanded party-manager and character-memory capacity
- Faster and more dangerous enemy combat
- Adjustable enemy animation and recovery behavior
- Longer patrol routes and broader regional distribution
- Native actor protections and safer map transitions
Performance and presentation
- Performance retrofits designed for much larger NPC populations
- Extended character and world draw-distance controls
- Adjustable distant character detail
- Grass, tree, shadow, and atmospheric-fog settings
- Borderless and ultrawide monitor support
- Automatic backups, installation receipts, and rollback support
- Xbox and PlayStation controller profiles
Currently in development
The next major feature is the ability to create and lead your own persistent Guild.
The private development build currently includes:
- Native Innkeeper Guild Services
- Create, edit, and disband Guild options
- Custom Guild names and emblems
- Permanent player ownership of the Guild Master billet
- NPC recruitment through the normal friendship interaction
- Recruitment decisions based on real friendship and relationship evidence
- Persistent accepted members
- Officer and specialist billet assignment
- Participant-backed Guild progression
- Guild-directory integration
- Accurate Guild attendance and field-cohort tracking
This system is functioning internally, but its native UI, recruitment flow, save/reload behavior, and progression are still being polished and live-tested before public promotion.
The same development branch also contains:
- A three-second hold-to-skip option for dialogue and story scenes. (Story/Cutscene skip)
- Corrections preventing high-density allied field parties from collapsing to zero
- Improved agreement between physically present adventurers and their Guild-menu Online status
Planned after the player-Guild system
The next designed Living World expansion is a broader NPC and Guild reputation and rumor system.
Planned systems include:
- Personal reputation with individual adventurers
- Guild reputation and notoriety
- Rumors that spread through witnessed events and social connections
- Guild diplomacy, alliances, rivalries, and conflicts
- Applying to and joining NPC Guilds
- NPC Guild recruitment of the player
- More complex rescue events and Player in Danger alerts
- Dynamic quests and regional events
- Crime, PK behavior, criminal reputation, and bounties
- Red and PK Guild development
- Richer Guild politics and leadership changes
- Permanent NPC consequences and death once the complete gameplay loop is ready
These are development goals, not features I want to advertise as finished before they are genuinely playable.
High-density performance work
Once the player-Guild system is complete, I plan to resume the performance retrofit for extreme population levels.
The long-term target is to keep battles and crowded scenes responsive with approximately 180–200 visible AI adventurers, with the eventual goal of holding close to 100 FPS where the game and hardware make that possible.
That work will be approached in stages, beginning with the largest measurable native AI, physics, and rendering costs.
Available editions
Community Edition
- Free
- Persistent adventurers and parties
- Living towns
- Fixed, balanced gameplay configuration
- Simplest version to install and play
Supporter Edition
- Everything in Community
- Persistent NPC Guilds
- Gameplay, population, and graphics settings
- More conservative Living World feature set
Beater Edition
- Everything in Supporter
- Earliest access to experimental Living World systems
- Relationship-based party formation
- NM and HNM operations
- Cross-field party travel and reinforcement behavior
- Intended for players comfortable helping test new systems
Please install only one edition and one death ruleset at a time, and back up your save before changing versions.
Closing
This project has grown far beyond the combat-and-density overhaul I originally imagined. The Living World is no longer just a future concept: persistent adventurers, parties, towns, NPC Guilds, progression, travel, and organized boss operations are already part of the released mod.
There is still a great deal I want to build, particularly around player Guilds, reputation, rumors, rescue systems, PK behavior, and long-term world consequences.
What would you most want from a true Living World version of Hollow Realization?
I’d especially like to hear which social, Guild, survival, or world-simulation systems would make the game feel most like the original SAO Death Game to you.
