Siegework

Play Siegework in a browser with WebGPU. The game saves itself in the browser and continues where you left it.

Explore a seeded map, wire an energy network across it, and destroy three nests before their attacks destroy your hub.

Playing

• The land. Each map’s seed picks one of four biomes. Meadows have lakes and mountains; deserts have no water, only mesas and winding canyon walls; tundra has frozen lakes, mountains and scattered boulders; an archipelago is sea but for its islands. Open ground is walked and built on. Rock stops walkers, sight lines and wires until burrowers dig it out. Water stops only walkers, so wires reach islands enemies cannot. Ice is walked but not built on. Every nest has a way in to the hub, though it may wind through a pass or over a causeway.
• Energy. The colony runs on one store of energy, starting at 160. Extractors draw it from violet crystals until they run dry: the starter, four cells from the hub in a direction the seed picks, yields 2 a second, richer crystals more, and each extractor level multiplies its yield. A destroyed nest exposes a rich crystal of its own.
• The network. Every finished building is wired to every other within reach whose line to it crosses no rock (water is fine). The hub reaches 9 cells, pylons 7, 10 and 12 by level, turrets 6 and extractors 4. A building the hub cannot reach through wires is unpowered and does nothing: no energy, no shots, no sight. Rebuild the link and it wakes up.
• Building takes time. A new building needs visible open ground and a powered building that can wire to it. Its cost is paid at once and it is built while it holds one of the hub’s build slots: pylons take 2 s, extractors 3 s and turrets 4 s, and the colony’s first extractor is ready at once. Nothing happens until it is ordered: the crystals in sight pulse white under a title banner that points to them and links to this guide; the camera opens on the starter crystal. Once a crystal is selected, the banner points to the build button, which pulses. The hub starts with one slot; upgrading it adds a second and a third. Further orders wait in the queue, and an unpowered site waits without blocking the others.
• Rush. Rushing finishes work at once for four times the share of its cost that remains: five times the price when rushed as it is ordered, less later. Cancelling refunds the cost.
• Upgrades, repair and scavenging. Each building has three levels. Upgrades raise pylon reach, extractor yield, and turret damage (one and a half, then two times, with a gun more each level), and restore full health. Repair restores the hub to full health at one energy for each two health it lacks. Scavenging returns a fifth of what a building cost.
• The siege. The first attack leaves the nests at 0:45, then one every 30 seconds; raids aimed at exposed outposts replace every other attack from 1:45, and a boss leads an attack every nine minutes. Enemies grow stronger every 90 seconds, less for each nest destroyed, and some burrow through rock. Turrets shoot the nearest enemy in sight and range, harder up close, and their guns stay where they last fired. A wounded enemy turns on the first turret that hit it and hunts that one until it falls, whatever else shoots it; a raider then goes back to its outpost.
• Winning. Destroy all three nests to win. Lose the hub and you lose.

Controls

The same controls work with a mouse, a pen and fingers. Drag to pan, pinch or use the wheel to zoom, and tap a cell to select it; the selection alone never orders anything. The dock on the side of your hand shows hub health, energy and the nests’ strength with the time to the next attack, then the build menu for the selected cell: a pylon, a turret, an extractor, an upgrade, a rush and closing. A button that may work later, waiting on energy, work, the network or the first extractor, turns flat blue with faint lines; one that cannot apply to the selection fades. Rush finishes the selected work, or else makes new buildings rushed. A selected building or hub adds cancelling its work and scavenging it, or at the hub repair. Beside it come the menu and turning buttons and the build queue, with a ring while a work builds and ! while it is unpowered; tap one to go to it. Under the nests in the opposite corner, a red alert throbs while the colony is under attack and goes to the latest attack, and a notice says why an order was refused.

Keys held with ⌘, Ctrl or Alt go to the browser, so its shortcuts, such as reloading, keep working. With Shift, WASD and the arrows pan as they do alone, and other keys do nothing.

The menu also restarts on a new map, resigns, and moves the dock to the left or right edge.

Saves

The colony depends only on its seed and the orders given at each tick, so the save is a journal: the seed, the tick reached and each accepted order with its tick, plus whether the game was paused and for which hand. Loading replays the journal. Under rules that have changed since it was written, an order that is now rejected is dropped and the colony grows differently; there are no save versions.

Reading the code

Siegework’s source is a tour of a complete application: seeded terrain, an energy network derived from the buildings, a siege on a fixed schedule, a world that changes only through orders and ticks, and a scene and HUD drawn from the state alone.