Changelog

2026-06-09

Journeys

We worked hard on improving the experience on slow models

  • A progress bar now appears after a while, informing you of progress
  • Animations have been added, showing when the model is thinking. If it's stuck, nothing will animate. Otherwise, hang on, it's on its way!
  • Streaming resume! If you reload the page while a turn is being generated, you won't have to wait for the complete generation. Streaming will be resumed as it should be.

World authors will also notice much better debugging

  • Turn history now show model reasoning, triggered beats, revealed secrets, out/in/reasoning tokens, etc.
  • Players will not see most of those improvement unless playing their own worlds, so that they don't reveal the design.

Misc:

  • Ask the narrator now doesn't close when clicked outside of the popup.

2026-06-08

Characters

Introduced a few facilities for solo characters (worlds where the objective is a simple setting and a single NPC):

  • Simplified world builder for 1:1 scenarios
  • Added Saved Characters: players can save their own character definition and load them in world that allow NPC customization
  • World builders can force character customization, asking users to fill the sheet before starting. This is useful for worlds that encourage self inserts

Solo Characters and Customized characters are still not the focus of Imagina. They are not chatbots either, they are still world with trackers, etc.

Journeys

  • New Ask the Storyteller button while you play: break the fourth wall and ask the Storyteller a question, off the record. Get a recap, ask who's who, why a character is acting like that, or where things are heading. It won't change your journey (but it can spoil what's coming).

Home

  • Brand new tag picker, which massively cleans up the UI. NSFW worlds are now shown by default if you turned this on your account.
  • Reordered navigation into a dropdown in the main menu.

World

  • Added macro support linesn more fields.
  • Added {{user}} macro.
  • The Loom engine is now aware of PC and NPC age and can update it. Age is freeform on NPCs so you can say "unknown", "ancient", "immortal".

2026-06-07

Author pages

Author pages are here! They are accessible via a stable URL that you can share.

Authors can write a bio, set an avatar and upload a banner. Worlds can be showcased.

Other users can follow the authors. For now, this doesn't send any notification, but we'll work on that soon!

We will keep improving them in the next weeks.

Image Generation

We cleaned up the image generation:

  • For world creation, we removed some redundant Illustrious models, cleaned up the picker and added multiple Anima based ones.
  • Worlds using image gen can now configure a wanted style, which uses different Anima LoRAs and checkpoints.

We're very excited about this as Anima can be prompted in natural language AND booru tags. This makes image generation in journeys much better and less random. We're also hosting this ourselves, meaning that no cloud provider knows about your generations. In exchange this means that this can sometimes be down.

Journeys

  • The output language picker now has an explicit English option, so you can force English narration even when a world was authored in another language.

Worlds

  • AI World generation now generates portraits for the world's NPCs and player characters automatically.
  • The {{user}} macro now works as an alias for <<player_name>>, and in many more fields (NPCs, trackers, endings, intro, and more), so character cards brought over from other apps keep addressing the player by name.
  • New Clock tracker type: the engine advances it by 1 every turn on its own and the AI can only reset it, so you can gate a story beat to fire after a set number of turns (for example, exhaustion after several turns without rest).

2026-06-06

Journeys

Introducing a "new" model: Mantle Lumen!

  • You can now pin the trackers popup to keep it docked as a sidebar while you play.
  • Starting a journey no longer auto-plays the first turn for you. You land on the intro and either tap the Suggested first turn or write your own.

Worlds

  • More Lore Entries options! Lore can now be "secret", which does NOT give any hint to the narrator about its existence until a story beat reveals it. It then acts as a standard lore entry.
  • Trackers can now show as bars, stat tiles, or plain numbers instead of just text.
  • The world editor now shows a rough estimate of how many tokens its prompt and opening turn use.
  • The "Review story with AI" tool got a big cleanup: Feedback now comes back as collapsible sections tagged High/Medium/Low, so it's easier to read. You can copy the whole thing as Markdown. There's also a new box in the advanced options where you paste a design brief, and the AI tells you everywhere your world drifts from what you had in mind.
  • Story beats have a new "Match any of (OR group)" condition: bundle several conditions so the beat fires when any one of them is true, instead of needing every condition to match. Handy for gates like "Wisdom or Intellect is high enough".

2026-06-02

Journeys

  • Improved clothes handling in the image generator.
  • It is now possible for players to enable Mature/NSFW themes on non NSFW worlds.
  • Added a clothing system to PC/NPCs for better image generation. Their clothing is stored separatly from their appearance.

Worlds

  • Added Solo Character tag.
  • It is now possible to force users to customize the character before starting. This is in preparation for support for user made personas.
  • Added an additional field on PCs and NPCs to give a natural description and/or booru tags to your character appearance. If you're familiar with them, this helps with consistency. The structured appearance is still the best way to give PCs a consistent generation.
  • Added an option to generate shorter narration.
  • NPCs now have an optional "Example dialogue" field. Drop in a few lines a character would actually say, and the AI uses them to lock in their voice (cadence, vocabulary, attitude, verbal tics).

2026-05-31

Journeys

You can now pick between 3 fonts: Standard, Serif, Monospaced.

2026-05-29

Journeys

Added a sidebar on the journey play area, to easily switch between journeys without going back home.

Turn edition! You can now edit the reply the AI wrote. Only the last turn is editable, rollback or fork if you want to edit a previous one.

2026-05-27

Models

We added back Xiaomi MiMo Pro as we managed to get it to work. Our default model has been Gemini 3.1 Flash since the beginning, but unfortunately Google made 3.5 too expensive for the quality. To prepare for 3.1's removal, we did a couple of things:

  • Make the engine massively more reliable with Claude Haiku, Deepseek v4 models and Xiaomi MiMo
  • Made DS4 pro the default engine.

Unfortunately the side effect is that games are much slower to play using DS4. But we believe that the very small cost more than makes up for it.

We hope that it's the last time we have to do that. Our goal is still to have a great experience using community finetunes that will not go away.

Engine improvement

  • World creators can now use five new beat effect types: replace an additional instruction block, change the journey objective, change narration style, present a forced choice to the player, and request specific player input. Phew!
  • Expanded macro support to lorebook and story beats. Also added new macros: <<player_name>>, <<turn_number>>, <tracker:Name>
  • The turn debugger now shows which creative nudge was injected into each turn's prompt.

We now have a Victory/Defeat system! Add your conditions and the game will resolve itself once met. Players can decide to continue the game. There is also an "ending" concept where you can define multiple Good/Bad endings.

2026-05-24

Enter key behavior

A new "Hybrid" mode is now the default: Enter sends on desktop, but not on mobile (where accidental taps are common). You can switch to "always Enter sends" or "always Shift+Enter sends" in Settings.

Suggestions

You can now tap multiple suggestions to combine them, then tap the last one again to send. No need to manually hit Send after building up your action.

Home improvements

The home layout has been tweaked:

  • The top bar looks much cleaner
  • Uses desktop wide screens better
  • Much, much improved mobile experience

Hope you like it!

2026-05-23

World copying

You can now copy worlds for those who enabled this option! This allows you to edit worlds and add your own twist on them. Lineage is recorded so we will be able to make a better UX in the future, showing where a world comes from and credit the original author(s).

Image gallery

You can now browse all AI-generated images from your journey in one place. Look for the photo icon in the top bar (or "Image gallery" in the menu on mobile).

Models

As Delve Lumen's low cost is now permanent, is has now been promoted as a recommended model and is eligible for free turns. Delve Spark is now hidden: games using it will continue to work, but it didn't make sense to keep a weaker model when the better one is quite cheap.

Image generation

You can now manually ask for an image generation using the "..." button on AI turns.

World Editor

Couple of improvements:

  • Added "author notes" in some places. That's for you, world builders!

  • Added global trackers, so that you don't have to duplicate them between all of your NPCs

  • Moved stuff around and improved mobile support again

  • Added a story audit feature where an AI gives you input about how your well story uses the engine and incoherences. Very early beta, free to use!

  • Bug fixes for world generation with Claude. For the time being, Gemini is the default world generator.

Engine

A few new authoring tools for Loom worlds:

  • Story beats can now set or retire a tracker when they fire, with the engine writing the value directly so you don't have to hope the AI updates it later.
  • Beat groups let you list a few beats together so the engine picks exactly one per journey. This is great when the same setup has multiple possible truths, like an abandoned house that's either haunted, a research site, or a cult holding ground, where each playthrough reveals a different one.
  • Settings can now be linked to a starting tracker, so the player's choice gets written into the tracker and beats can gate on it from there.
  • Trackers can be marked readonly, which means the AI can't add, update, or retire them. Useful for setup choices that have to stay fixed all journey, like which pill the player drew or which class they picked.

Misc

As the credit pricing model seems to turn off a lot of people, we added a button to show interest in a subscription model.

2026-05-21

World Editor

The world editor's UI has been rethought on mobiles:

  • Removed the sticky header (it's now in a drawer)
  • Added a drawer for the sidebar, so you can quickly jump between sections
  • Added a fullscreen button near all inputs to focus on them
  • Made inputs taller by default
  • Removed accordion style inputs (like lorebook, characters) in favor of modals
  • Grealy reduced or removed padding on mobile

Desktop users got a couple of benefits from this too.

But the most important information is that world edition is now possible on phones, even small ones!

2026-05-20

Locations

Worlds can now define known locations! When location tracking is enabled, the engine will read pre-made locations from the world definition and will be able to dynamically create or update locations for better story consistency.

Location tracking is enabled by default on new worlds.

New model

Gemini 3.5 Flash is available for texting. While it's much faster than Gemini 3 Flash, it's 2.5x more expensive in our testing. We're evaluating which model should become the default, as we believe that Google will soon stop supporting the current one.

Misc

  • The image generation feature is being improved slowly. We're still trying to make it work on SDXL based tech as it's the most cost effective.
  • Animated world covers (beta). Some worlds can have animated cover art. This can be disabled in your profile settings.

2026-05-12

World share codes

Every published world now has a short share code (e.g. K3M-JP2) for easier sharing.

2026-05-11

Loom: A rewrite of Imagina's engine

While Imagina's Spark engine has served us well during this beta period, it had a couple of limitations due to its architecture.

Loom is a rewrite that turns Imagina into an agentic story teller, where the AI can decide to loop and do work before writing the narration. This work includes consulting the world definition, past turns, check on past and present NPCs, etc.

This unlocks new possibilities for Imagina:

  • Turn generation is shorter
  • Games can get more complex as the AI can load references to the world definition, lore and past NPCs
  • Way better NPC tracking past 20 turns
  • AI can now remember something that specifically happened in a previous turn even if it was 90 turns ago
  • For big worlds, costs went down
  • And finally: More model choices

We initially thought that this would be too costly to run, but we managed to optimize it enough to make it worth it.

More model choice is what we believe is the best outcome. The new engine now supports models like Xiaomi's, DeepSeek and in the future community fine-tunes of smaller models. For you, this means that you will have more choice in what AI models are available: broader range of tone/behaviour and cost ranges!

This brings us even closer to our ultimate goal of breaking free of the big cloud providers and hosting our own models. No more surprise deprecation, no more tone change or storyteller you like going away.

While we will continue to support Spark for a while, after the initial Loom test ends all worlds will use it by default. This is the version we will iterate on from now on. To celebrate, we bumped the number of daily free turns from 2 to 3, passing the cost savings to you!

Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

2026-05-10

New welcome experience for new users

2026-04-30

Edit/Replay a player turn

Each player action bubble now has its own menu with Edit/Replay this turn. Choose it on any past turn and the story rewinds to right before that action: subsequent turns are deleted, and the action and steering fields are repopulated with what you wrote, ready for you to tweak the wording (or change your mind entirely) and resubmit. A confirmation dialog explains what will happen before anything is deleted.

The existing rollback option on AI narrations was renamed to Resume story from after this point so it reads more like what it actually does.

2026-04-25

Better-looking generated images

Reworked how prompts are built for the SDXL anime image models (Nova Anime XL, WAI Illustrious SDXL, CyberRealistic XL). Turn images, character portraits, world title cards, and editor backgrounds now run through a shared post-processor that injects a polished quality stack and a long anti-failure negative bundle on every generation. The most visible improvement: skin no longer drifts into the milky wax / melted plastic look that occasionally appeared on close-up shots. Other recurring artifacts (rainbow hair, stray extra figures, deformed hands, watermark text) are also suppressed automatically.

When a moment intentionally calls for wet skin (rain, hot spring, a sweaty intimate scene) the anti-oil bundle steps aside so the image actually looks wet. Mirror shots now get the right tag combination so the character interacts with the mirror instead of treating it as background decor. Group shots with three or more named characters fall back to a tight close-up of the most iconic subject or a peopleless scene shot of the location, since SDXL cannot reliably render that many bodies in one frame and was producing fused-limb images in those cases.

Faster shared world links

Shared world links (/world/<id>) now arrive with the world preview, name, description, tags, content warning, and portrait already in the page rather than waiting for the app to fetch them after load. Search engines and link previews see the actual world copy instead of an empty shell, and the page feels snappier on a cold open.

2026-04-21

Daily free turns

Every account now gets a small pool of free turns each day, usable on most models (the premium Astral Lumen tier still costs credits). Free turns reset at midnight UTC and are consumed automatically before your credit balance whenever you play an eligible model. The credits popover in the play header now shows "Free turns remaining" alongside your balance, and entries in your turn history are marked when they were covered by a free turn.

If you're on a model that doesn't accept free turns and run out of credits, sending an action will offer to switch to a free-turn eligible model instead of failing.

Portrait history

Every journey character now remembers each portrait you've generated. Open the character menu and click Portrait history to scroll through every portrait, with the turn it was made on and when, and tap any image to view it full screen. The one currently shown in the character sheet is marked Current.

Portrait turn tag

The character sheet and fullscreen portrait viewer now show which turn your portrait was generated on, so it's easier to tell when an older image no longer matches the story.

Rolling back a journey now also rolls back any portraits generated on the discarded turns. If you had the right portrait before a rollback, you'll need to generate a new one, or the previous journey-wide portrait (if any) resurfaces.

2026-04-20

First world generation on the house

Every account now gets one free world generation. Head to the world editor, describe a concept, and your first generation runs without costing any credits. A note on the generation panel will remind you while the freebie is still available, then disappear after you've used it.

2026-04-19

Journey: generate a character portrait

When AI-generated turn images are enabled on your Profile, open the character menu in the play header (your character name) and use Generate portrait to create a portrait from your appearance. Credits apply like other image generation.

Admin: open a player journey in the play view

From Admin → Game debug, Open in Player now loads that journey correctly. The play UI is read-only for another user’s game (no actions, branching, rollback, model change, or credit shortcuts). Debug and export still work.

World editor: reorder story beat conditions

In Story Beats, condition rows now have move up / move down controls so you can change evaluation order (conditions still combine with AND semantics).

Story beats replace the clock

Worlds can now drive pacing with story beats: authored cues like "the storm finally breaks", "the rival makes her move", or "someone notices the player's pendant". The engine evaluates beats every turn — some fire on their own when their conditions match (turn count, tracker values, after another beat, a chance roll), others stay armed and let the AI decide when the moment lands. Fired beats can drop a one-shot nudge into the current turn or quietly add lasting context the AI carries forward.

You don't have to do anything — beats just show up in the story when their world uses them.

World authors will find a new Story Beats section in the world editor where the old Clock / Time lived. The clock system has been retired; existing worlds keep loading, and you can rebuild any timing rules as beats with the new condition kinds.

Turn images are here (beta)

Worlds can now illustrate their biggest story moments: first meetings, dramatic reveals, scene changes. The AI picks when. Character-focused shots float beside the narrative, wider scenes sit above it. Each image costs about 7 credits on top of the turn.

You stay in control. Turn images off for every journey on your Profile, or disable them just for the journey you're in from in-game Settings.

World authors can opt in from the world editor under Advanced Features → Turn Images, add optional guidance for the AI, and tune how often images appear.

Full details in the help article.

2026-04-17

  • Changed how copied worlds work: Clicking Copy on a world now opens a short confirmation that points you at favoriting first if that is really what you want. Copied worlds show "Original world X by Author" under the title and always credit the original creator, even when you copy a copy of a copy.
  • Builder pane for world authors: When you play a journey on a world you authored, the debug panel gains a new Builder tab. From there you can jump to the editor in a new tab, refresh the version list, and reload the journey with any draft or published version of the same world, without starting over. Structural changes can still break the story, so a confirmation spells out the trade off and offers to start a fresh journey instead.

2026-04-15

  • Sign-in page: Signing in with an email that has no account now takes you straight to the sign-up form with a message explaining no account was found. The sign-up form has a new confirm-password field, and all inputs lock while a request is in flight.
  • World editor: Fixed a bug where accepting an AI-generated character portrait could silently drop the image when using a booru-tags image model.

2026-04-12

  • Background world generation emails: Fixed an issue where the "your world is ready" email could fail to send after you closed the editor tab during generation.
  • Text effects in stories: The AI can use eight visual effects in its narration, grouped into three categories: Mystical (glow, burn, void), Subtle (whisper, shaky), and Digital (glitch, flicker, static). Effects can be combined with bold/italic, and the AI can pick custom colours to match the scene. World authors can enable or disable each category in the world editor to match their world's tone. You can toggle effects in Settings (Auto / On / Off), and they respect your system's reduced-motion preference.
  • Slash commands: Type / in the action input to see available commands. /retry re-generates the last turn, /undo rolls it back, /steer <text> pre-fills the steering box, /1 through /4 quickly pick a suggested action, and /debug toggles the debug panel.
  • Shareable world links: Worlds now have clean URLs (/world/:id) you can copy straight from the address bar. Social previews (Discord, Twitter, etc.) show the world's portrait, name, and description.
  • World preview for visitors: People who click a shared world link without being logged in now see the world's details instead of a generic page.
  • World play stats: Worlds now display how many times they've been played.
  • Blur NSFW images: New option in Settings to blur portraits on worlds marked as NSFW. Unblurs on hover.
  • AI prompt improvements: Fixed an issue where internal engine terminology could leak into the narrative text.

2026-04-08

  • Public beta release