The playable War prototype. No install. No account.
A WORLD TO DISCOVER
03 / NORTHUMBRIA — THE WIDER WORLD
One day.From idea to first public prototype.
100 KB max.Compressed budget for the site & both modes.
Your browser.All you need to start exploring.
THE WORLD WE’RE BUILDING
One kingdom. Two ways to play.
War is playable now on a 17.6 km square map around Whitby. The wider world reaches from the Tweed to the Humber, across Northumberland and Yorkshire to the Pennines: the setting for the Campaign still in development.
I WAR · PLAYABLE PROTOTYPE
A coast to contest.
Command & Conquer-inspired skirmishes for two to four bands. Begin with a three-minute founding truce: choose a suggested home, gather and build. Inland fields grow food faster; coastal homes have quick ship access but are exposed to boat raids. Build shared river bridges, recruit warriors by sea and defeat every rival clan. Nobody dies.
Solo starts immediately against three computer clans. Public matchmaking fills spare places after a short wait; private codes let friends join. Defeat the Chief, occupy the hall and win over its community through a victory feast. Exhausted fighters kneel and recover safely; ready fighters can Rest. Keep sober guards: celebration leaves your guests vulnerable. Only the last clan wins.
II CAMPAIGN · PLANNED
A community to grow.
The planned solo saga spans the wider Northumbrian landscape. Explore coast, moor and river valleys; build settlements, challenge rival communities and work towards Eoforwic / Jorvik (York). The War conquest system is also the planned foundation for capturing both native and rival Viking settlements: claim their halls, seize supplies and win their people’s loyalty. Rise from a single homestead to a kingdom you can return to.
Campaign is not included in this version.
Solo skirmishes reset on reload. Multiplayer reconnects briefly in the same tab; an absent player is replaced by the computer after two minutes. No campaign saves yet.
WAR · CONQUEST HAS CONSEQUENCES
Take the hall. Win the people.
Victory deserves a feast. A feast deserves a guard.
From rival village to new base.
Breach the palisade, overcome the Chief and hold the hall entrance. Its flag changes to yours, and a share of the enemy’s remaining food, timber and stone joins your stores. Halls can be captured, never destroyed.
Occupation is only the beginning. Spend 40 food and 10 timber on a proper victory feast: tables, barrels, raised drinking horns and a fire outside the hall. After the celebration, the community becomes loyal and its hall can recruit your next army.
Raise your horns. Keep watch.
A minute of feasting brings two minutes of drunken vulnerability. Guests move more slowly, hit less hard and take more morale damage. Choose who celebrates and leave sober people to defend them.
Noise carries. Rivals within 60 paces can hear the ceremony and see a temporary feast marker, even on unexplored ground. It reveals the location alone and fades after 20 seconds without sound. A rival might investigate—or strike while your guard is down.
Draw your defences
Sketch a whole palisade and see its timber bill before committing. Fund it together; watch workers raise each section. Your people pass through, enemies must breach it.
Raid the livelihood
Burn through farms, fishing huts, smithies and jetties to disrupt food and reinforcements. A weakened rival is easier to conquer, but an exhausted raiding party leaves your own home exposed.
Scout, bridge, sail
Send scouts into the unknown, draw patrol routes, build shared river crossings and bring warriors by sea. The Chief guards home until you call him into battle.
War rules described here. The same conquest-and-loyalty loop is planned for native and Viking settlements in Campaign; Campaign remains in development.
ABOUT HAVENSTEAD
Built in a day. Made to keep growing.
An experiment in how much world you can fit into a very small game.
The first playable prototype was built and put online in one day: 23 September 2026.
An independent project by James Cockburn, developed with Claude Code and Codex. James directs and playtests; AI coding tools implement and revise, checked through automated tests and actual play.
Based on real Northumbrian geography, with rivers widened and crossings arranged for gameplay. People and scenery are drawn by code. No downloaded art packs or giant textures.
Under the hood +
Rendering
Canvas 2D with cached terrain and sprites. No WebGL or WebGPU.
Code
Plain JavaScript, built with Vite. No browser runtime libraries; multiplayer uses a small Node WebSocket server.
Keeping it light
Capped buffers and caches. Drawing stops in hidden tabs. Multiplayer rules run on the server at 10 ticks per second.
Compatibility
Modern desktop and mobile browsers; not every device has been tested.
THE LAND BEYOND YOUR FIRST HOMESTEAD
From the Tweed to the Humber.
Northumberland and Yorkshire are the canvas for Havenstead’s larger story: long coastlines, the Pennines, moorland and the rivers leading inland. The regional demo shows that wider geography; the gold square marks the playable Whitby skirmish area.
StreaneshalchWhitby · your first War coast
BebbanburhBamburgh · the northern stronghold
Eoforwic / JorvikYork · the campaign’s destination
Period place names sit alongside their modern names. This is a game inspired by the Viking age, not an exact historical simulation. Campaign exploration and conquest across the full region are still being built.
Tell James what worked, what didn’t, or where you’d like the game to go.
Feedback reaches James’s private Slack through Clint. Visits and plays use aggregate counts so James can see how the games are being used. Please leave out sensitive information.