A party-management RPG
Forest Breach
You run a company of adventurers. Each day you give them their orders, the world takes its turn, and you read what happened.
What you actually do
You hire a company. Four in the field at a time, each with a name, a trade and their own gear — a warden, a tracker, a herbalist, whoever you can afford. They level up, they get tired, and they can die.
You give them orders for the day: march to the next town, forage, hunt something, scout the country, rest, or take work in a guild hall. There are only so many hours, so you pick.
Then the turn runs. The company does what you told them, meets what the road puts in front of them, and the day comes back to you written down — where they went, what they found, what they fought.
You give orders knowing the odds
Before you commit to anything, the game prices it and tells you the odds. A march to the hollow shaws: thirty-one watches, along a road nobody has walked yet, with a weary party — and a 53 per cent chance of meeting something on the way.
You can also leave standing instructions — if the fight turns, break off and come home.
Every day comes back written down
There is no combat screen to click through. The turn resolves and hands you an account of it: the weather, the ground covered, the sign your tracker noticed, and the fights, won or lost.
Every fight has a full blow-by-blow account behind it if you want to read why it went the way it did.
The map fills in as you chart it
You start knowing one town. Everything else is black until your company walks it. Roads, rivers, barrows and the beasts that range through them all appear because someone went and looked.
Roads fade if nobody uses them, and a faded road costs you more to march down than an open one.
Towns are where the work gets done
Sell what you hauled back, buy what you are short of, and commission gear from five guild halls — smiths, leatherworkers, fletchers, apothecaries and carpenters. Prices move, and a good haggler moves them further.
The notice board is where the next job comes from, and the tavern is where you find someone to replace whoever you just lost.
Every screen
Twelve pages in all. Click any one to read it full size.
Fights happen while you are somewhere else
A company that walks into a wolf pack fights it whether you are looking or not. What you get back is the account: who swung at what, what got through, and who is carrying an injury into tomorrow.
Twenty days of that becomes a chronicle — ambushes, hard frosts, the day someone made level two.
The field guide is knowledge you had to earn
A hundred and twenty-two creatures live in the country. You know what a forest adder does because your company met one, and the entry fills in further every time you meet another — its habits, then what it drops, then where it is weak.
Until then the page has black bars where those lines should be.
It also runs on a small e-paper screen
Forest Breach drives a standalone e-ink frame that sits on a desk and shows the company's current page. Change tabs on your phone and the frame follows. It redraws when the turn does and holds the page in between.
The Journal
what happened this turn
The Party
who is in the company
The Pack
what you are carrying
The Atlas
the map, as far as you have walked
The Ground
the tile you are standing on
The Town
guild halls, notices and the tavern
The Orders
your plan for the next few turns
The Field Guide
creatures you have met
The Almanac
season, weather and moon
The History
every turn you have played
What's in it
Fourteen trades to hire
Wardens, trackers, herbalists, smiths, delvers, nightwalkers and more. Four go out at a time; the rest wait in town.
One open map
A hundred and eighteen places and fourteen towns across a country a hundred and sixty-five tiles wide. No level gates, no zones.
A hundred and twenty-two creatures
Each with its own habits, spoils and weaknesses, learned by meeting it rather than read off a wiki.
Contracts and callings
Every town's notice board carries work. Longer questlines run between towns and change what is on the map.
Five guild halls per town
Smiths, leatherworkers, fletchers, apothecaries and carpenters. Commission gear, or learn the trade yourself.
Crafting from recipes you find
Patterns are found in the world, not unlocked on a tree. Materials come off the ground and off the things you kill.
Foraging and hunting
Worked ground thins out and grows back. Hunt a named beast, or take what the country offers.
Weather, seasons and the moon
Rain slows a march, frost ends a season, and the almanac tells you what is coming.
Gear that wears out
Every fight takes something out of a blade or a boot. A field repair helps; only a guild hall makes it new.
Food and distance are real
The company eats every day and carries what it eats. A long trip means carrying a lot of it.
Plays in a browser
Nothing to install. Add it to a phone home screen if you want it to look like an app.
An optional e-paper frame
A small standalone screen that shows the company page and redraws when the turn does.
Ask for an invite
Leave an email address and I’ll write when there’s a place open. The e-paper frames are hand-built, so there are only ever a few at a time.