existence

A text-based HTML5 game. Power anti-fantasy — constrained agency without judgment. No stats visible. All state hidden. Prose carries everything.

You play as someone trying to get through the day. The simulation runs underneath: neurochemistry, sleep debt, financial anxiety, the weight of unanswered messages. None of it surfaces as numbers. What you see is what the character produces — options that feel closer or further, text that reads differently depending on things you can't name.

Tone: Porpentine's With Those We Love Alive (2014). Body-aware, fragmentary, dissociation through texture not description.

Running

bun serve.js

localhost:3000. No build step. Requires bun.

A flake.nix is provided if you use Nix.

Architecture

ES modules, factory functions, no global mutable state. createGameContext() in context.js wires all modules.

Key modules: state.js (28 neurochemical systems + hidden state), content.js (all prose and interaction definitions), timeline.js (seeded PRNG + action log + replay), game.js (orchestration), senses.js / realization.js (procedural prose pipeline).

All randomness through Timeline.random(). Same seed + same action sequence = same world state.

Save format: IndexedDB. One run per playthrough. Autosave on every action.

Design

See docs/design/ for the full design documentation — philosophy.md, emotions.md, overview.md, health.md, and others. STATUS.md tracks what's currently implemented. INFLUENCES.md catalogs prior art and atmospheric references.

Tests

bun test

Tests cover the sensory compositor (tests/senses.test.js) and realization engine (tests/realization.test.js).