Playable Link: https://samanmuradi.itch.io/flodrikena

"Flodrikena is a small grand-strategy game set after the fall of a Bronze Age river empire. You start with forty men, a little gold and no land. So do eleven other houses. Found a village among the ruins, marry, scheme, trade or go to war, and try to take the old capital and the crown."

Every ruler has traits, ambitions and memories of what you did to them, and you can ask anyone "Why?" to see exactly what they weigh before they act. Armies march on the map as the soldiers they're made of, towns grow from huts into walled cities, and battles play out where you can see them.

About me: I'm a web developer with several years of JavaScript and frontend behind me and a strategy game of my own has been a dream since I was a kid. I started it many times and never got far. This time I work document-first: I write the design for each version, decide what goes in and what doesn't, and use Claude to help write and test the code. The map art and the music are generated by code in the browser, not hand-drawn or hand-composed.

It's free, runs in the browser on desktop and phone, and a short tutorial gets you going in a few minutes.

What I'd love to hear: where did you get stuck, or stop playing? Even one sentence helps.

Congratulations on building your dream game! I gave it a try. Although I might not be the target audience, if you want, take my playtest with a grain of salt!

I was super confused and didn't understand anything! So many menus fighting for my attention. So many options to answer. For example, one city offered my alliance, and it showed a list of responses. This list has 8 options! And I still don't know what the game is about, who I am, or what I need to do! Another pop-up told me my men wanted gold. Cool! But where do I get gold? In Warcraft, there was a mine near my city center. 

Anyways, it looks like Civ, and I honestly never played Civ; I'm not into complicated games. Hence. Maybe you can ignore this whole comment. Don't let me discourage you. The game looks beautiful, and I wish you the best of luck

Thank you! This is honestly the most useful kind of comment. Confused in the first minutes is exactly what I'm trying to fix so you're very much the target audience for that part. Two things you said hit hard: there's no clear "who am I and what's my goal" and when your men want gold nothing tells you where gold comes from (it's taxes from your towns, trade and raiding, but the game should say that right there). Both are going into the next updates. Thanks for giving it a go!