StoonGame : Ember Worlds
A free multiplayer colony-building game that runs right in your browser — lay roads, grow a living economy, found colonies and compete with friends and AI. Inspired by the classics of the genre, powered by our own Stoonies, our own art, and rulesets you can tune to taste.
All of this is in the codebase today — not a wishlist. Features marked experimental are playable behind ruleset toggles.
Our own take on the classic Settlers II-style coordinate system — plus a square grid for dungeon floors. Flat, cylindrical, or toroidal world topologies, stitched multi-chunk maps, rivers with springs, tributaries, lakes and bridges.
Server-authoritative game rooms with lobby, matchmaking and chat. Up to 4 players per session with team support, plus AI opponents that build, expand and besiege.
A 30-building economy grown from the S2 roster and extended with S3/S4-flavoured options — carriers and donkeys on flag roads, inland boat-ways on real rivers, caravans, colonies and sea expeditions, edge-based walls and gates with breach combat.
Our little settlers and serfs are called Stoonies — the project's own folk, with their own look, their own name, and a personality all of their own.
Bind a persistent soul to a Stoonie and it becomes a hero: levels, XP, skills, equipment and direct WASD control. Lead them into procedurally generated dungeon floors — torch-lit themed crypts with monsters, loot and chained depths. Experimental
Optional deep simulation: every Stoonie is an individual with hunger, thirst and fatigue, a home, a family — born, grown, aged and eventually gone. Deep economy with spoilage and byproducts, seasons and weather, fires and disease, full economy analytics. Experimental
Every match is a recipe: editable building presets, rule toggles and era-inspired options — S2 Classic as the faithful core, S3 and S4 flavours as options, or your own individual mix. The host picks; the whole match plays by it.
A data-driven scenario engine (triggers → effects → objectives) with story campaigns, a built-in scenario editor, co-op support — plus a full map editor with water-level sculpting and scatter tools.
Every piece of game content is a plugin on one engine. Three.js renderer with terrain, seasons and day/night, touch and keyboard controls, de/en localization throughout.
Real in-game captures from the current development build — work in progress, placeholder art and all.
Our map generator is the heart of the game — explore two procedurally generated worlds in real 3D, side by side, and vote for the one you'd rather settle. Your votes steer the generator's tuning. Works even when the game servers are down.
Prototypes are major releases — each ships gated behind ruleset toggles so a strict classic match is never destabilized.
The Settlers-inspired core. In the game today: full building economy, carrier & donkey logistics, territory and military conquest, catapults, edge-based walls and gates, rivers with boat-ways and bridges, caravans, colonies and sea expeditions, 4-player multiplayer, AI opponents, map editor and scenarios.
Still coming for v1.0: final fidelity tuning against canon, competitive fog-of-war for public matches, performance gate, closed playtest.
The RPG layer. In the game today behind ruleset toggles: the soul vault with bound and free souls, hero Stoonies with XP/levels/skills/equipment, direct unit control, death-and-extraction, portal shards, and generated dungeon floors with monsters, loot and co-op.
Still coming for v2.0: the persistent sandbox world — decay and weathering of idle regions, long-lived shared worlds, frontier portals.
The living world. In the game today behind ruleset toggles: per-Stoonie needs and morale, housing rosters, the full lifecycle — pregnancy, birth, childhood, coming of age, elders, death by cause — families and lineage, spoilage and byproducts, seasons and weather effects, fires and disease, economy analytics.
Still coming for v3.0: hardening — long-generation soak tests, perf gate with the needs sim active, public playtest.
True endless scaling — implemented: the map grows in every direction while players play. Runtime chunk append on all edges, tiered tick rates for distant regions, multi-region persistence, world ops tooling, frontier resource hubs and roaming threats.
v4.0 gate: the human playtest and sign-off are open — the code checklist is complete.
The living world atlas — a world that grows and breathes. In the game today: region-scoped diffing that keeps huge maps cheap, universal building wear with builder repair, and the presence lifecycle — untended land freezes, reclaims to void and re-materializes when someone wanders back. A worldScale profile picks the size class at match creation.
v5.0 gate: playtest and sign-off are open; the federation go/no-go lands on measured data.
Sketch-stage groupings, not commitments: EmberCraft (artisan economy, content packs & a store), EmberShards (cursed lands & the void), EmberDepths (tribute raids), EmberNet (player-hosted nodes). Several are already in flight — see the cards below; a proposal only becomes a real prototype with an approved scope and the same four gates as P1–P5.
Where the project should grow after the desktop release — ordering is intent, not a calendar. Exploring means we probe, not promise.
A first-class phone & tablet experience — the hard milestone right after the desktop release. The touch-adaptive mode already works today; the milestone is the full, polished parity pass.
Run your own node: our federation tech already links servers into one world mesh — the plan is player-run nodes that host matches and frontier regions.
We're probing a dedicated client on a full game engine (an Unreal prototype exists) for the day the browser isn't enough — richer art, bigger worlds, native platforms. A direction, not a promise.
The world is already a living diorama — leaning over it in stereo 3D is a natural fit we're curious about. The renderer and the UI would both need real work, so this stays an idea for now.
Things we think about, sketch, discuss — and increasingly, build. Every card carries its state: experimental means playable today behind a toggle; in development means actively being built; concept means designed, not scheduled; idea means it might never happen. No promises — the forum is where they get shaped.
The destined main mode: one canonical, never-ending world per server — endless in time, bounded in space. A fixed wrap-around map that never truly empties: decay recycles untended land, wilderness renewal restores it, world quests give it a pulse. In game, experimental
One continuous story that walks you through every system in learning order: settle an advanced culture, lose it in a scripted catastrophe, descend through dungeons, survive Armageddon, rebuild from a handful of survivors inside the shared world. The Soul Vault is the only thing that survives every loss. In game, experimental
Start with a camp-site and bare hands: Stoonies discover skills in the world, teach each other, and each era unlocks more of the building roster — gatherer → crafter → producer → trader → high culture. Knowledge lives in people; a dead master can set you back a generation. In game, experimental
Authored campaigns on the scenario engine: the first Aztherion pilot legs are in the game and the authoring loop keeps growing the world's story — Emberfall is its spine. In game, experimental
The dungeon-run system refined toward a faithful hack-and-slay descent: hero-locked close camera, our own spellbook, prefix/suffix gear with durability, themed floors, a quick-run toggle — all in our own Aztherion dressing. In development
The world as a broken shard adrift in the void: cursed lands that visibly blight until gardeners cleanse them node by node — and real holes in the map, with cliff rims, rocky undersides and waterfalls pouring into nothing. In development
The missing craft tier between gatherers and industry: hides → leather → clothes, wool → cloth, rope, baskets, bricks — and the goods matter: unclothed Stoonies freeze when a storm front rolls in. Plus graves, per-cause deaths, and instanced items with named uniques. In development
Everything as portable, namespaced content packs — wares, buildings, races, spells, monsters, maps, scenarios — authored in-game through the Content Forge and shared through a store. The DLC pipeline, proven on the artisan pack. Concept
The MCP bridge is real and growing: agents can already author maps and scenarios and steer matches through four tool namespaces — the endgame is agents holding real player seats, consent-gated. In development
Stoonie personalities, quirks and speech bubbles — the layered bark system already runs, with optional LLM remarks on your own model (Ollama included). Deeper trait-and-opinion simulation builds on the P3 individuals. In development
Raiders on the waterways — a hostile faction preying on boat-ways, colonies and expeditions. Idea
First/third-person close view with a smooth zoom gradient — walk the world and dungeons at Stoonie eye level. A gimmick mode, but a tempting one. Idea
Carrier-only transport already ships as a free-walk ruleset option — the remaining idea is roads that grow where the land is actually walked. Idea
StoonGame : Ember Worlds is a free, independent project in early development. Playing, testing and telling us what you think is the best support — and as development continues we're exploring ways to fund it. Tell us below which forms you'd actually support.
No account needed — tick every option you'd genuinely support. Results steer what we build first.
The 🐞 Feedback button lives in the top-right corner of every screen — in-game and on the start page. Reports can attach a screenshot, your game state and settings automatically.
Fixed threads for bug discussion, feature ideas and game systems — plus the dev log where the plan evolves in public.
Bring a friend into a match — it runs in the browser, no download. Every player, tester and discussion shapes what gets built next.
Get a ping at release and pick the lists you want — wishlist notification, mailing list, or both. Works even while the game servers are down.
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StoonGame : Ember Worlds runs entirely in your browser — no download required.
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