StoonGame : Ember Worlds
A browser-based multiplayer strategy game inspired by the classic Settlers series — II, III and IV — with our own Stoonies, our own art, and a ruleset 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.
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: 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.
Status: design complete, scaffolded. Work starts in earnest after the P3 hardening gate.
Things we think about, sketch and discuss. Not promises — some of these will happen, some won't. The forum is where they get shaped.
An MCP server so AI agents can join matches as fully controlled players — field your own agent and watch it build. The command protocol already exists for the builtin AI. Idea
LLM-driven personality simulation — individual traits, quirks and opinions for every Stoonie in your realm. Builds on the P3 individuals. Idea
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 with no flags; roads grow dynamically where the land is actually walked. Idea
Long-form progression — a settlement that develops through eras, unlocking technologies and culture across generations. Idea
A new admin console brings a live dashboard (per-room tick rates, stall warnings, server/database health), feature votes, evaluation stats and AI leaderboards — reachable from the lobby and in-match. Buildings can now weather and be repaired by engineers, the tick loop sheds ambient work under load, Ctrl+K opens a command palette with remappable keys, ambient audio follows the game clock, and the first federation plumbing links servers into a shared world mesh.
Read the full dev logStoonGame : Ember Worlds is a free, independent fan project — the best way to support it is to play it and tell us what you think.
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.
StoonGame : Ember Worlds runs entirely in your browser — no download required.
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