Have you wanted to try out our tabletop games, but aren’t local?
Or maybe you don’t have a second person to play those games with?
Well, now you can try Phalanx in your favorite web browser!
Now, some quick housekeeping…
The browser edition is in beta. Why? Well, neither Isaac nor I are great HTML coders, so this edition was created using Claude AI, based on the game mechanics Isaac designed, with me doing the work of guiding Claude in bug fixes, game corrections, and making sure the design and mechanics still matched Isaac’s vision.
Which means that it’s still a little… clunky.
Therefore, “beta.”
But it is functional, and has let me scratch the itch of playing the game even when no one else is available to play it with me. 😁
I recommend going full-screen, but it’s available in both web browser and on mobile.
Now a caveat… I’ve only been able to test it on Windows 11 with a Chrome browser and on an Android phone.
But have a go, and please consider filling out the survey linked at the top of the game (click “Provide Feedback”). That’ll help us refine the game in the future. ☺️
Want to know more about how Phalanx came about?
Well…
Originally, Isaac and I had Distant Horizon.
And in Distant Horizon, the characters played a card game called Battle Decks (Originally called Beastie Wars, but that sounded too similar to another franchise).
At some point, Isaac decided it’d be really cool to figure out the mechanics of the game, so he did. He ended up making a few different faction sets, including a steampunk version based on the universe the Camaraderie members (antagonists in Distant Horizon) came from.
And because we can’t just leave a story referenced, we decided to write the story of that universe, The Multiverse Chronicles! (Back in revisions! Yay!)
But then Isaac wanted to come up with a game that made sense for those characters to play, something simple, that they might have at taverns or in small bags easy to tote along while traveling on foot.
And one day I came back from work to a fully-fledged game designed in pencil on a manila folder using pennies and nickels for game pieces and art drawn on cut-up index cards.
We refined the game, then eventually created a boxed edition on The Game Crafter… but that site is really meant for prototypes, and ordering a single copy was expensive, and not quite how we wanted the game to look.
We also created a bag edition, in which Isaac ironed on the game board to cloth bags he sewed, and all the game pieces fit inside the bag. Looked cool, and we sold almost all of those, but they took a lot of extra time since we were hand-sewing the bags.
The other edition we made involved pairing up with a local wood-carver (actually, two, because our first round sold out), and had them create a really elegant wooden board edition.
Fancy! But definitely more expensive, so we were only able to stock a few at a time.
Looked great at festivals, though.
Eventually we had an idea for putting the board game on a mouse pad, but hadn’t found a feasible way to do that until more recently.
But that version is finally complete and debuted at the Flower Moon Spring Market back in May! Woot!
Even so, all those versions were limited to what we could do locally.
We kind of tinkered with the idea of a computer version using a program called Tabletop Simulator a while back, but didn’t get far with it. And then came Claude AI.
I’d been working with Claude for a bit on other projects, but if you know much about Claude, it’s known for coding. And at some point I asked, “If I gave you the rules and art and details for a game we made, could you make a computer version?”
Said yes, so I tabled that idea until I had a chance to gather the pieces.
Eventually I started up that chat, worked through a few details with Claude, and *mind blown.* Didn’t take much to get a working prototype of the browser game running.
After more tinkering and testing, we finally got the browser version to a point that I decided it was ready for its first reveal. I sent it off to the Distant Horizon Universe newsletter!
And now, finally, I’m doing the public reveal.
I expect there will still be bugs, though I’ve done what I can to smooth anything out that I’ve found. But I would love for you to have a look, give it a try, and let us know what you think!
Click here to try out Phalanx!
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Happy reading, writing, and gaming!
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 