Endless Worlds
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The game

The world

A harbour town, forests on every road out of it, mines in the cliffs and more under the ground. All of it drawn for this game.

It starts in town

Everybody arrives on the quay.

The town is built in terraces above a harbour. A cobbled square sits round a fountain with a crystal on top that lights it after dark, and a broad stair runs down to the quay where the ships are tied up.

Most of the people you need are a short walk from where you arrive: the guard who sends parties into the dungeons, the guildmaster, the mail counter, and townsfolk with work to hand out. Down on the waterfront a sailor will teach you to fish.

The harbour: a timber pier with lamp posts, barrels and crates, a ship's deck with its wheel alongside, and deep blue water round it
The harbour at the bottom of town. You can walk the pier and the decks, and the shoals in the water are where the fish bite.

Doors that open

Walk into a door and it swings open. Walk again and you are inside.

  • Inside the tavern: a plank floor, a stair up to a gallery, red booths along the wall and round tables on a red carpet

    The tavern

    Barrel tables with a bench either side, and the place to ask about a room of your own.

  • Inside the bank: the banker in a top hat behind his counter, steel safes and stacked gold at his back, and a red rug in front

    The bank

    A banker behind his counter, steel safes at his back, and a drawer for whatever your bags cannot hold.

  • Inside the general store: the shopkeeper behind his counter, shelves of flasks and loaves behind him, and a red carpet in front

    The general store

    Food and potions behind the counter for the road out of town.

  • The back of the armoury: anvils, a furnace and stacked crates on a cobbled floor, a suit of armour on its stand, and a prospector at work

    The armoury

    Suits of plate on stands under the banners, and anvils at the back.

Out of town

Walk off the edge of the map and you are on the next one.

A forest under a rock cliff: earth paths, pines and oaks, a pond fed by a waterfall, a timber hut and slimes on the grass
A forest of winding earth paths between pines, bushes and rocks, terraces of grass climbing to the left and a pond below

Every road out of town leads into wilder country: forests under walls of rock, ponds with fish in them, huts where the trades are taught, and monsters that get tougher the further you go. Somewhere out there are the places the strangest timber grows and the rarest ore lies.

Press M for the world map, which shows how the regions join up. The world is still being built, and new places open one at a time.

Under the ground

Places you reach by a door, a lid or a ladder.

  • A mine on several levels: torch lit earth floors, a turquoise stream falling over waterfalls, plank bridges, ladders and mine carts

    Mines

    Levels joined by ladders and handholds, water falling through the dark, ore in the walls and things in the roof.

  • Under the town: dark stone floors and pillars, channels of water crossed by plank bridges, and lanterns on the walls

    Under the streets

    Step onto an iron lid in the square and you are under the town, where most characters have their first fight.

  • A crypt of blue stone: tombs and sarcophagi, candles in the walls, and skeletons walking between them

    Crypts

    Galleries, tombs and bone pits, and whatever was buried in them walking about.

A day that turns

Everybody in the world is on the same clock.

The fountain square at night, the crystal on the fountain glowing blue and the street lamps throwing pools of light onto the paving

Dawn is cold, midday shortens the shadows, and dusk turns the paving gold. Then the street lamps come on, and different things come out to play.

Rooms have their own light, so a shop at noon is not lit like the square outside it. Outdoors, everything throws a shadow that moves with the sun: buildings, lamp posts, you, and whatever you are holding.

Weather you can stand in

Rain over the town while the forest next door stays dry.

Calm, sun, wind, rain and thunderstorms. The weather is set for each map, so two people standing in the same street always see the same sky.

In a storm the light drops and the whole town goes grey. The flash comes first and the thunder after it, and the wait in between is how far away it was.

Swimming

Wade in and you swim.

Walk into deep water and you keep going, head above the surface and hands treading, a little slower than on the path. Swim across a pond instead of going round it, or wade through the shallows at its edge.

You cannot fight from the water. Attacks, skills and emotes all wait until you are back on the bank.

A player swimming in a forest lake beside a timber jetty, head above the water

Characters that move like people

Nobody in the street stands like a statue.

A crowd on the quay: players in every colour of clothes and hair gathered by the crates and the timber pier, two of them talking

Stand still and your character's chest rises and falls. Nobody breathes in step with the person beside them, so a crowd in the square never moves as one.

Throw a run of blows and stop, and you stand there out of breath for a moment before you settle. In a dance or a wave the head, the arm and the body each move on their own rhythm, and everybody watching sees it.

Where to go next

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