EMPIRE://36 · Austin French

A turn-based roguelike set in New York in 2036. Every world seed simulates the ten years before you arrive, and you find the history as graffiti, shrines and flood lines.

EMPIRE://36 is a glyph-rendered, keyboard-only roguelike. A new mayor takes office in January 2026. The game simulates the decade that follows, fresh for every seed: collapses, cults, leagues, wars between landlords and gods. Then it drops you into what's left and lets you try to get rich before the city kills you.

The map is real. 122 NYC neighborhoods with the borough coastlines, rivers and routes where they belong, and procedurally generated streets, blocks and interiors inside each one. You can die in Bushwick.

EMPIRE://36 street view: a glyph map of a Carroll Gardens intersection lit around the player, with HP, cash and the date in the header, a hint bar, and a message log at the bottom — Turn 22 on Suydam St and Cypress Ave. You see what your character can see.

The city map: borough landmass in colour with crime, money, infrastructure and faith stats for Carroll Gardens, transit lines, and flooded-out areas marked — The travel map. Each neighborhood has its own crime, money, infrastructure and faith, and the decade changed them.

The city runs without you

History is generated once per seed and discovered as residue. The live city is three tiers of simulation, with a director that puts what it decides on the street in front of you.

The Decade: a chronicle of 2026 to 2036 for this seed, year by year, with events like the Hollow Kings rising out of Brownsville and the Throgs Neck miracle of 2026 — The chronicle for seed "austn". Generated once, then left for you to find in the world.

Determinism is a feature. Same seed, same decade, same city. Tests check it.
The simulation is off the render thread. It runs in a Web Worker and sends state across as transferable buffers, so the turn resolves in under a frame and the canvas only draws.
Money becomes position. A black-market fence, a property ladder from an SRO cot to a storefront that earns and draws shakedowns, hired muscle that stays dead, and a profile that makes loud wealth a target.
Institutions you can join and rise in: a law firm, a clinic network, a transit-salvage crew, a faith hierarchy, a street crew. Five citywide arcs run whether you're in them or not and repaint the map when they resolve.
A vertical city. Sewers and dead subway tubes under every neighborhood. Go in debt and you take the drop: stripped and dumped underground instead of killed.
Permadeath with continuity. Dead characters leave graves, stashes and obituaries in the same world for the next one.

Server-side saves with username and password (argon2id), autosave, a localStorage fallback, a CRT shader, and 51 tests covering determinism, map connectivity, performance budgets and an end-to-end simulated run. Every actor with behaviour or dialogue is fictional; real public figures only appear as datelines.