A single-player action-RPG that lives in one HTML file. Chop, mine, fish, smelt and smith — no servers, no accounts, no signal.
v0.3.0 — the Gamma Visual & Animation Overhaul · 100% offline · MIT licensed
The Gamma release is a ground-up visual pass over the whole valley, with the gameplay of the combat beta fully folded in:
- 64-bit remastered renderer — multi-tier swaying tree canopies, crystalline ore veins, mossy flagstones, animated water with sun glints, and a plank bridge with iron bolts. Flip back to the 8-bit legacy engine any time from the Settings window.
- A hero that actually walks — a six-frame interpolated cycle with bending knees, counter-swinging arms and a bobbing torso; cows, hens and goblins got real gaits too.
- Live fire lighting — the furnace and campfire are true light sources, each casting a warm additive halo that pushes back the night.
- Explorer camera — mouse-wheel zoom from a 1.0× grand vista to a 3.2× close-up, with smooth sub-tile follow.
- A valley with edges — an impassable ring of snow-capped mountains now seals the realm; future updates simply push the ranges back to grow it.
- Everything from the combat beta — Grublin Gully, the chicken coop, loot drops, steak, feather-lure trout, bone-burying Prayer and more.
Full detail in CHANGELOG.md. Planned work lives in
ROADMAP.md.
Most of my working year is spent out of town — mine sites, back roads, places where the phone bars go to die. ForgeBound is a classic-style browser RPG I'm building to play in those dead zones: one that never phones home, never needs an account, and compiles down to a single HTML file I can keep on a laptop or a phone.
It's cut from the same cloth as the great browser MMOs of the 2000s — skilling, XP curves, banks and bartering — rebuilt as a quiet single-player world. Every name, tile, icon and sound in here is original and made from scratch.
npm install # once, while you still have signal
chmod +x launch.sh # once
./launch.sh # builds if needed, then opens the game in your browser| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
./launch.sh |
Verifies the project tree, builds if dist/ is missing, opens the game |
./launch.sh --serve |
Serves the game at http://localhost:4173 (zero-dependency) and opens it |
./launch.sh --rebuild |
Forces a fresh build before launching |
./launch.sh --help |
Usage |
Prefer the plain tools? npm run dev for a dev server, npm run build to
produce the single-file game, npm run preview to serve the build.
The build inlines everything — code, styles, fonts — into one file:
dist/index.html. Once it exists, the internet is optional forever.
| Bring | Needed for |
|---|---|
dist/index.html |
Playing — that one file is the whole game |
launch.sh |
Convenient launching / local serving |
src/ + configs + node_modules/ |
Rebuilding while off the grid |
Open dist/index.html directly (double-click or file://) or use
launch.sh --serve. Progress autosaves to the browser's local storage — same
machine, same browser, pick up where you left off.
| Region | What's there |
|---|---|
| Vale Square | The heart of it: furnace, anvil, campfire, bank booth, and Roka's trading post |
| The Westwood | Trees and oaks — your first XP |
| Keldrek Mine | Copper, tin, iron, coal… and gold, if you're good enough |
| The River | Shrimp in the western shallows, trout in the eastern current (bring a rod and feathers) |
| The Pasture | Cows — with opinions, raw beef, and bones |
| The Coop | Four hens south-east of the square: feathers, raw chicken, and eggs they lay |
| Grublin Gully | A goblin camp north-east through the pasture — two Bramble Brigands lurk in the deep |
| The Peaks | An impassable ring of snow-capped mountains sealing the valley; the bridge is the only crossing |
Old Maro stands in the square and knows this realm well — talk to him often.
Ten skills are live, all running on the authentic-feeling XP curve (83 XP to level 2, 13,034,431 to level 99):
| Skill | Source | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Attack ⚔ | Melee combat in Grublin Gully | Improves accuracy |
| Strength 👊 | Melee combat | Raises your max hit |
| Defence 🛡 | Being hit in combat | Harder for foes to land on you |
| Constitution ♥ | Dealing and taking damage | Your hitpoints |
| Prayer ✦ | Burying bones dropped by the fallen | Big bones pay best |
| Woodcutting 🪓 | Trees and oaks in the Westwood | — |
| Mining ⛏ | Copper/tin at 1, iron at 10, coal at 20, gold at 40 | — |
| Fishing 🐟 | Shrimp by hand; trout at the eastern current | Trout: level 20 + rod + feather |
| Smithing 🔨 | Smelt bars at the furnace, forge blades at the anvil | Steel: level 30 |
| Cooking 🍳 | Cook catch, meat and eggs at the campfire | Steak: level 15, heals 9 |
The full 23-skill grid is already stubbed in the UI — the rest light up as quests and deeper systems arrive.
| Do this | To… |
|---|---|
| Left-click the ground | Walk (pathfinding handles the rest) |
| Mouse-wheel over the world | Zoom the camera in and out |
| Left-click a tree, rock or fishing spot | Gather — repeatedly, automatically |
| Left-click a goblin or brigand | Fight — auto-attacks until it falls |
| Left-click a cow or chicken | Farm it — meat, bones and feathers |
| Click loot on the ground | Pick it up — coins, blades, eggs and more |
| Click an egg on the ground | Gather it — fry it at the campfire |
| Click bones in your inventory | Bury them for Prayer XP |
| Left-click furnace / anvil / campfire | Open crafting, then pick a recipe |
| Left-click the bank booth | Deposit and withdraw |
| Left-click Roka | Buy tools, sell your haul |
| Click food in your inventory | Eat it (+HP) |
| Click a tool in your inventory | Wield it — better tiers work faster |
| Right-click an inventory slot | Drop it |
| Gear button in the side panel | Engine settings — zoom, render mode, audio |
Esc |
Close any panel |
- React 19 + TypeScript, built with Vite 7 and Tailwind v4
vite-plugin-singlefilecollapses the entire game into one portable HTML file- All in-game art is drawn procedurally on
<canvas>— zero image assets - Two render engines in one: the 64-bit remaster and the 8-bit legacy mode, switchable live from Settings
- Lighting pass — additive fire haloes over a day/night wash, plus interpolated six-frame character animation
- All sound is synthesized with WebAudio — zero audio assets
- BFS pathfinding, table-driven loot, resource respawns, wandering livestock, mountain-sealed world bounds
- Autosave to
localStorage, debounced plus on-exit
ForgeBound/
├── launch.sh # offline launcher (preflight, build, open/serve)
├── CHANGELOG.md # release history (Keep a Changelog format)
├── ROADMAP.md # planned work for upcoming versions
├── src/
│ ├── game/ # the engine
│ │ ├── map.ts # procedural tile world + mountain bounds
│ │ ├── data.ts # items, resources, recipes, loot, shop stock
│ │ ├── useGame.ts # the tick loop — actions, combat, economy, saves
│ │ ├── pathfinding.ts
│ │ ├── render.ts # dual-mode canvas renderer + lighting
│ │ ├── xp.ts # the XP curve + skill table
│ │ ├── audio.ts # WebAudio synth
│ │ └── types.ts
│ └── components/ # login, HUD, panels, modals, event log
└── dist/index.html # ← the game, after one build
Good places to start extending: new items, resources and recipes live in
src/game/data.ts; new terrain in src/game/map.ts (push the mountains back
to grow the world); new gameplay loops in the tick inside src/game/useGame.ts.
- Combat v1 — melee, hitsplats, loot, death/respawn and Prayer
- Pasture & coop — livestock, eggs, steak, feather-lure trout
- Gamma v0.3.0 — remastered renderer, walk cycle, fire lighting, mountains, camera
- v0.3.1 — double-buffered rendering (kills canvas flicker)
- v0.3.2 — login flow rework + changelog-driven builder's notes, resizable windows
- Quests with real rewards
- Light up the remaining 13 skills
- A bigger world — push the Peaks back, new country beyond
- An original soundtrack
- Deeper crafting chains (fletching, crafting, leather)
ForgeBound is a personal, non-commercial project inspired by the classic browser MMOs of the 2000s. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Jagex, and no copyrighted assets are used — everything here (names, art, icons, sound) is original.
MIT — take it, learn from it, forge something of your own.