⛓ RUNECHAIN

A tiny pixel Soulslike MMO set in Gracefall Parish: a ruined, cozy-gothic top-down RPG space with a real on-chain economy. Monsters drop RUNE, your own browser mines server-issued reward work into a genuine SHA-256 proof-of-work chain, and you spend it (recorded as on-chain transactions) to level up at Hearthlight. Bosses mint deterministic Boss Sigils as one-of-a-kind on-chain assets.

It's a tiny no-build browser client (index.html plus plain scripts in game/ and engine/) and one zero-dependency Node file for the realm server. No framework, no npm install.

Research/prototype project. The "crypto" is an in-game proof-of-work mechanic only — no wallet, no token of value, no real money.

Run it

Single player (instant): open index.html in a browser.

True MMO (one command, no installs):

node server.js

Then open http://localhost:8080 in two or more tabs/machines. Every connected browser shares one world and one ledger.

Accounts

Online realms create a local browser game account with Web Crypto and bind one character to that account per season. Characters are conditionally-transferable on-chain assets: they are transfer-locked while a season is open and unlock for sale on completion. No wallet is required for the prototype. For any production sale-capable season, the project stance is that wallet-only binding is insufficient: the sale-capable account must be linked to one verified identity per season, and wallets remain payment/settlement rails only. Production character sales are still gated by legal/compliance review.

Controls

Key	Action
WASD	Move
Mouse	Aim
Shift	Dash with brief i-frames
Q	Target the nearest foe
E	Interact with story objects
Click / Space / L	Attack (costs stamina)
G	Rest at Hearthlight / level up / forge RUNE relics
B	Open the Wardrobe (buy/equip cosmetic skins with Gold)
M	Toggle wallet

Combat feel: the demo opens in safe Hearthlight, with one weak Hollow outside the light. Enemies escalate through story gates instead of dogpiling the spawn. Movement is faster now, dashing grants brief invulnerability, attacks spend stamina, and target lock turns your swings toward the selected foe.

Economy

Two currencies, and the line between them is the whole design:

• RUNE — the grind currency. Drops from kills, mined into the proof-of-work chain. Power is bought only with RUNE (leveling and relics at Hearthlight). It is never for sale.
• Gold — the spend currency for cosmetics only (skins in the Wardrobe). No power, ever. Skins are bought by direct purchase — no loot boxes, no randomness.

Two one-way on-ramps fill Gold:

1. Grind → convert: turn confirmed RUNE into Gold at a flat rate.
2. Buy with wrapped SOL: each purchase splits 50% burned · 35% marketing · 15% ops fee, all routed on-chain. This 15% is the only fee in the whole game — grinding, converting, spending, and account trades are all free.

Because real money can only ever buy looks, the free grind always reaches every power tier (just slower than a payer would gear cosmetically), and there's no pay-to-win and no chance-based spending. Every lever — rates, the split, skin prices, and RUNE relics — lives in the ECON, SKINS, and RELICS tables in game/content.js.

The wrapped-SOL purchase is currently a devnet mock — it mints Gold and records the split on-chain locally, with no real funds. Swapping Econ.buyGoldWithSol() for a real SPL token transfer is the seam to go live, and should not happen without proper legal/ compliance review first (selling cosmetics for real crypto still has tax/jurisdiction implications; a character-sale secondary market is the single value-exit and requires legal review before go-live).

What's in it

• Gracefall Parish art direction — a higher top-down pixel view with old parish road tiles, mossy grass, shrine rubble, grave clusters, candles, brambles, cursed soil, and warm Hearthlight against colder outer-road corruption.
• Pixelorama-ready tile and sprite sheets — deterministic PNG assets in assets/pixel/, including the terrain atlas, generated monster strips, and a PixelLab-imported eight-direction player-directions.png sheet.
• Monster roster — Hollow Debtors, Gate Sexton Marrow, the Mempool Warden, and Mother Tallow in the first playable story slice, with nameplates, health bars, and wind-up tells.
• Soulslike combat — dash i-frames, stamina-gated attacks, target lock, visible attack arcs, safe Hearthlight start, and limited simultaneous attackers.
• Souls-style levelling and relics — spend confirmed RUNE on Vigor / Endurance / Strength or forge relics (power is grind-only).
• Data-driven Act 1 story seam — the STORY block now plays q01-q05: Hearthlight Chapel, Parish Road Receipts, Chainwell Ledger, the Mempool Yard, and Tallow House. Paste a richer storyline into window.RUNECHAIN_STORY later without changing the game loop.
• Cosmetic economy — a Gold-funded Wardrobe of skins (no power, no loot boxes), with two one-way on-ramps (RUNE→Gold, or wrapped-SOL split 50% burn / 35% marketing / 15% fee). Equipped skins sync over the network, so other Recorded players see what you're wearing.
• A real blockchain economy — from-scratch SHA-256 proof-of-work chain (verified against Node's crypto), server-issued RUNE reward work in connected realms, local prototype mining in solo mode, on-chain debits when levelling, unique Boss Sigil assets, and pending-debit anti-double-spend accounting. Only server-accepted blocks broadcast from the canonical realm ledger in connected play.
• MMO server — server.js is an authoritative relay implementing WebSocket and static serving by hand, with zero dependencies.

Edit the pixel art

Open the PNGs in assets/pixel/ with Pixelorama or any pixel editor. tiles.png is a 16px terrain atlas; generated monster sheets have four frames in one row: idle, walk, attack/cast, and hurt/death. player-directions.png is imported from the PixelLab eight-direction character export with node scripts/import_pixellab_character.js. New PixelLab art (heroes, NPCs, monsters, bosses, props, tilesets) imports through node scripts/import_assets.js <type> — see scripts/ASSETS.md. Re-run node scripts/generate_pixel_assets.js only when you want to regenerate the deterministic starter monster/terrain assets; hand-edited art should be kept as the source of truth once approved.

Deploy

See DEPLOY-AWS.md for hosting paths (Lightsail/EC2, ECS, App Runner). A Dockerfile is included. The client connects to the WebSocket on the same origin, so it works behind any host/port.

Project layout

index.html      # browser shell, HUD, town loop, renderer, and gameplay wiring
game/           # no-build browser runtime: SHA-256, Chainwell, content tables
engine/         # modular platformer, battlefield, turn-based, and sequencer modes
server.js       # zero-dependency Node MMO relay + static server
assets/pixel/   # editable Pixelorama-ready tile atlas and sprite strips
scripts/        # deterministic local pixel asset generator
models/         # legacy optional GLB notes from the old 3D path
Dockerfile      # containerized deploy
DEPLOY-AWS.md   # hosting guide

License

Code is MIT (see LICENSE). The current web-pixel demo has no runtime art or engine dependency. Generated starter sprites are deterministic project assets.

Disclaimer

This is a game prototype. The blockchain is a pure in-browser proof-of-work mechanic for gameplay; it is not a cryptocurrency, holds no monetary value, and involves no wallet or real funds.