ZZYZX RECALL
A first-person immersive sim set at an isolated gas station in the California desert. A seven-character cast. Twenty scenarios. They remember everything you do.
Fact sheet
- Title
- ZZYZX RECALL: The Last Stop
- Developer
- Last Stop Studios (Korra W. and Rob-o-la, parent + daughter, two people)
- Genre
- First-person immersive sim
- Tonal anchors
- Clerks, Repo Man, A Scanner Darkly
- Engine
- Facepunch Source 2 (s&box) · Python FastAPI backend · Google Gemini
- Platform
- s&box at launch · itch.io page · Steam if reception warrants
- Status
- Pre-production · slice script v0.1 drafted · throwing verb production build in flight · weekend cadence
- Target audience
- Immersive-sim players, indie weirdos, people who liked the QuickieStop in Clerks and would happily stay there for ten more hours
- Languages
- English at launch
- Pricing
- Free at launch on s&box/itch.io · paid at $1.99–$2.99 only if a Steam release is justified by reception
- Studio location
- United States
- Studio founded
- 2026
- Web
- rob-o-la.com
- Source
- github.com/last-stop-studios/zzyzx
- Contact
- Rob@Rob-o-la.com
What makes it different
Most LLM-driven NPC projects fail because they hand the model the world state and hope it produces coherent decisions. ZZYZX RECALL inverts that: a Python backend pre-resolves every memory conflict before the LLM sees a single token, scoring each fact by source weight, recency, and sentiment. The model dresses pre-decided facts in character voice. Nothing more.
The slice ships with a seven-character cast — two QuickieStop employees, two regulars in the parking lot, a long-haul trucker, a fading celebrity, and the absent owner who steps in when things go sideways. Each character is authored against a full bible (voice, history, relationships, recurring lines), gets a hand-authored response tree across five resolved stances, and reacts to a shared per-session memory layer. Throw a strawberry slushie at Lizzy in minute one and Floyd's dialogue notices it for the rest of the session. Walk back an hour later and the employee who covered her shift already knows what you did.
Twenty hand-authored scenarios, one extremely detailed environment, no prompt-engineered character personalities. The slice ships free; if reception justifies it, a Steam release follows. If a credible licensing signal emerges, the Resolved Facts Layer extracts as middleware. Until then, hold the magic close.
Pull quotes
"The LLM never decides what matters. The backend does." Studio thesis
"Floyd doesn't know what he thinks about you yet. The backend does." Design note · resolved facts
"Every spill, every kind act, every thrown taquito gets tagged, scored, and stored. Walk back in an hour later and Lizzy already knows what you did to Floyd." Memory system
"A two-person indie game studio. A parent and daughter project, intended to be fun." Last Stop Studios
By the numbers
- Backend tests
- 564 passing
- Slice cast
- 7 characters (Floyd, Lizzy, Jay, Kevin, Earl, Chuck Lee, Julie)
- Response trees authored
- 7 (all cast; placeholder fidelity pending Korra's final pass)
- Resolved stances
- 5 (positive · neutral · negative · positive-with-doubt · negative-with-doubt)
- Memory-tag vocabulary
- ~40 canonical event tags, growing
- Scenarios designed
- 20 (GDD target)
- Prompt-engineered NPCs
- 0 (by design)
- Team size
- 2
The cast
Floyd Rogers — laconic, observational, deadpan. Behind the counter.
Lizzy Halloran — anxious-talkative, sharper edge when she's read you wrong. Also behind the counter.
Jay Mendez — mellow, slow cadence, frequent "man." Lives at the phone booth.
Kevin Marsh — mild-mannered, slight lag, frequent affirmations. Lives next to Jay.
Earl Sutton — gravelly, deliberate. Long-haul trucker. Pit-stops here on a route he's been running for twenty-six years.
Chuck Lee — theatrical bass, projects confidence, hides desperation. Beef-jerky magnate of receding renown. His likeness is on a cardboard cutout near the register.
Julie Jenkins — warm, weary Southern drawl. Owns the place. Steps in to pull a shift when one of her employees walks out.
Downloadable assets
All assets are served from rob-o-la.com; right-click → "Save link as" or hotlink directly. Drop us a note at the contact below if you need higher-res versions, alternate crops, or anything off this list.
The team
Korra W. — art, shaders, sound design, and front-end visuals. Daughter.
Rob-o-la — backend, architecture, LLM integration, and project plumbing. Parent.
Last Stop Studios is named for the gas station in the game, which is also named for the gas station in real life, which is also where the road runs out. Operating on weekend cadence; documenting every architectural decision in writing so we don't have to re-litigate them later.
Contact
Press, licensing, business: Rob@Rob-o-la.com
Source code, issues, technical questions: github.com/last-stop-studios/zzyzx