Introducing Dark Forest Galactic. Our entry with @EudemoniaGames to the #vibejam by @levelsio, @cursor_ai and @boltdotnew.
Dark Forest Galactic is a battle royale simultaneous turn-based strategy game where 72 civilizations fight for survival across a spiral galaxy of 823,000 hexes.
Inspired by Civilization, StarCraft, and Liu Cixin’s Dark Forest.
The core tension: To grow, you must be seen. To survive, you must not be.
Some features:
🔷 Fractal hex map: 7 levels of nested hexagons. As your civilization advances, you operate at larger scales. A Level 5 civ controls 2,400 hexes with a single unit.
🔷 Light delay fog of war: information from across the galaxy arrives turns late. That Dyson sphere you spotted? It was finished 5 turns ago. That fleet heading your way is closer than it appears.
🔷 13,122 procedural races: 9 variables (metabolism, body type, consciousness, ethics, senses…) combine into unique civilizations. An Efficient/Synthetic/Subterranean/Psionic race plays completely differently from a Hungry/Organic/Space-dwelling/Aggressive one.
🔷 Tension between growth and steath. Build a Dyson sphere for +% power, but the entire galaxy sees you.
🔷 Auto-chess fleet combat: 30 ship classes across 3 body types (organic swarms, robot armies, crewed fleets), 10 squadron roles. Arrange your forces, watch them fight.
🔷 Escalating super weapons: from dimension strikes to vacuum decay bombs that consume the galaxy itself. Last civilization survives.
Day 1 recap: Built the entire game in one session with Claude:
📋 Started with collaborative game design. Wrote a full GDD and 7 detailed design bibles (map, economy, combat, units, super weapons, races/tech, UI/audio)
⚙️ Built the complete game engine:
823K fractal hex grid with neighbor tables (0.6s generation)
Galaxy with 6 spiral arms, 438K stars, neutron stars, black holes, dimensional rifts
Energy bandwidth system with light-delay pipelines
Movement with A* pathfinding and edge field terrain
Fog of war with universal passive scanning and 3 active detection types
Full combat simulation (30 ship classes, 16+ abilities, tick-based)
13,122 procedural races, 90 tech nodes, diplomacy, 9 super weapons
5 bot AI strategies that play full games
📊 Ran 1000s of simulated games to balance. Final stats: 72-turn avg, civ level 5 reached, 159 combats per game, 90% of winners at max level.
🎮 Built the full client:
Three.js 3D renderer with 7-level LOD
Fractal hex borders (true outer boundary computation, not just larger hexagons)
438K glowing star dots with type-specific colors
Holographic war table entity rendering
Preact UI overlay (Civ-style: resource bars, player list, alerts)
Main menu → Race selection (9 variable pickers) → Game → Game Over flow
🌐 Built multiplayer server (WebSocket, turn resolution, matchmaking with bot fill)
Next for Day 2:
🗺️ Revamping player starting positions on the galactic arms
🔄 Getting the first real iteration of the turn-based gameplay loop. Click hexes, issue orders, watch your civilization grow
🎨 More visual polish on the galaxy rendering
Built with Three.js, TypeScript, Preact. All game logic runs headless for automated testing. The full game simulates in 1.76 seconds.
Dark forest rules apply: the universe is dark, resources are finite, and every civilization is a potential threat. Will you hide in the shadows or blaze across the galaxy?
#gamedev #indiedev #webgame #typescript #threejs #strategy #battleroyal
