The Silk Road / I made game!
Hark!
I have, for many years, had a dream for a game. What if it was just like the classic Oregon Trail, but instead one traveled along the ancient Silk Road??
Well. Forsooth, I have created it!
Suggested music to listen to while playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCddgxadfzs (I think it would be great to have MIDI style caravan music but that's probably beyond me.
Yes, I "vibe coded" it. The Claude people had allowed access to the highest level of their AI, "Fable" (for a few days?), and people were posting on twitter how they asked it to make a Minecraft clone and it had successfully done so in like one shot, so I was like, well, okay, if it can do that it can make this super simple game I've dreamed of, so I asked it to do so, as it happens, about half an hour before Claude Fable got disabled (!).
Also, incidentally, I had wanted to test it out but every previous question I had asked it had refused to answer because apparently it had a strong strong aversion to anything biology related and had long since determined I reeked of forbidden knowledge from all my entomology related questions, but finally asking it a pure programming code was something it could get onboard with.
So I actually only got one prompt in to it as Fable and it created the basic functionality. Then in the Opus mode I went through some 28 or so iterations with further tweaks from 15 playtests, to get it to where it is now, and I am really happy with it!
Please give it a play and give me any feedback and/or any suggestions at all.
Future Plans:
It's currently set at 762 AD which seems more interesting than the Pax Mongolia of Marco Polo's day but it should be pretty easy to keep all the mechanics and just change the descriptions and make any necessary route alterations to make it so you can also play in 1271. In that mode I want to also add in where Marco Polo was and when so you can set out at the same time as him and keep bumping in to him.
A 552 AD version where you can reenact stealing the secret of silk production from China seems also fun.
SMaps! - I really want to add some maps, stylistically similar to the existing movement animation, that gives a sense of where these places are. Done!
Hunting mini game
Ultimately I'd like to have a (simplistic! 90s style!) map involved, but the basic idea have in mind would be have you choose your hunter(s), they can take a mount that had been carrying cargo as the party is stopped while they hunt, a mount will give logical advantages. Similar to traveling a simple animation to occupy you while time ticks by counting hours and distance from the encampment, with it calculating odds of encountering an animal similar to the travel event calculations. Animals will vary by setting. Characters have a perception and stealthiness rating, if multiple hunters go together it will use the best perception and lowest stealthiness (stealth failure obviously scares the animal away). Characters not native to the terrain will be less likely to find prey and more likely to get hurt or lost, getting lost also increases with distance from encampment traveled (imagine a desert native in mountain pine forest!) Done!
Combat "Mini game" Done!
This is not a combat game and I don't intend to make it into one. But I have it in mind to perhaps make combat more complex by being able to give your guards simple upgrades (better (period appropriate!) armor, crossbows), and assign mounts to them (which thus don't contribute to the cargo capacity). Combat would progress in simplistic rounds: (1) at a distance, the bandits threaten you, if you and them have bows/crossbows some shots are exchanged with possibility of injury on either side (2) if you don't clearly out-arm them they charge, melee combat calculated, (or if you have a lot of mounted fighters they can charge; (3) if the bandits lose they retreat, if you have horse mounted guards they may chase them down for additional loot (/ in the desert chase them to their home water hole and thus find a source of water).
The Amber Road - It just occurred to me that we've already got a northman in Constantinople willing to join the party (in the next update (I burned through a week's tokens in three days!) I've already written directions to emphasize that he's already traveled from Scandinavia anda special note if he reaches the east end of the Silk Road) -- with the mechanics of this game it shouldn't be too hard to make a whole expansion retracing that character's steps -- ie a character begins in Scandinavia and travels along the rivers to Constantinople. I think that expansion could offer a very rich expanded experience with minimal re-inventing of mechanics (a lot of stuff would have to be re-skinned of course). And once the character arrives in Constantinople ... they can go on the Silk Road!
And so, load up your three best friends and their favorite mules in Constantinople, and see who dies of dysentary first!