Overview
KING: Archipelago puts you in charge of an island nation for an eight-year term. You balance the treasury, your population, land use, and pollution -; sell land to industry for short-term money, or hold the line for the long-term health of the place. The twist over the original is the archipelago: you're not alone. Other island rulers share the same ocean, so fish stocks deplete and pollution drifts between islands. One ruler's industrial boom is everyone else's problem.
Background
This is a modernized version of the classic BASIC game "KING" (also known as the "Pollution Game"), written by James A. Storer of Lexington High School in the 1970s and distributed through DECUS as BASIC-8-346. The original cast you as Premier of "Setats Detinu" -; United States spelled backwards -; a small island where you needed 100 rallods per citizen per year just to keep people alive, trying to finish your term without disaster.
The remake keeps that bones-deep tension between treasury, population, and pollution, then opens it up into a multiplayer ecosystem so the environmental theme actually has teeth: your neighbors' choices wash up on your shore.
How It Works
It's a single-file web app in pure HTML/CSS/JavaScript -; no frameworks -; that you can open straight in a browser for local play. Beyond hot-seat local multiplayer, it supports true cross-computer online play via WebRTC, with a small Node.js WebSocket signaling server (run separately) handing out four-letter room codes. There are also four AI personalities to fill seats -; Balanced, Industrialist, Environmentalist, and Aggressive -; and in-game chat for online matches.
Current Status
Playable and live, with local multiplayer working out of the box and online multiplayer available once you stand up the signaling server.
- Local hot-seat play, 2-;4 players (human or AI), runs from a single HTML file.
- Online multiplayer over WebRTC with a Node.js signaling server and room codes.
- Shared-ocean simulation: fish stocks, pollution drift, and four distinct AI personalities.