After Cyberedge

[Made for Secret Santa Jam 2022]

A game by LaChapeliere (programming, design, writing), Tori-Lynne Davis (writing) and Azul_Vaquero_Art (menu art).

Music: "One Sly Move" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

The web version should work on Firefox, it has known issues on Safari, Internet Explorer and Chromium.

After Cyberedge

Humanity has attempted to get ahead of climate change and resource scarcity by investing everything into cutting-edge technology. Individual humans came second, as societies focussed on never-ending production improvements in order to win the race against Earth’s limitations. Entire regions of Earth, and their inhabitants, were sacrificed to ensure the continued progress of more fortunate populations. Even in privileged regions, most are condemned to a life of unfulfilling labour in order to reach production levels sufficient for survival.

This Cyberedge era saw many technological accomplishments, from harnessing nuclear fusion, to growing functional human clones, to fulfilling the teleportation dream. As technology was hailed the solution to of humanity’s limits, many humans have been “enhanced”, to improve their efficiency or correct their bodily flaws. Those cyberhumans have had part(s) of themselves replaced or modified with implants, prosthesis, exoskeletons, genetic modules, …

Twenty-three years ago, our collapsing planet finally caught up with humanity. In less than a year, starvation and epidemics wiped out half of the world population. Violent riots erupted in every remaining city and in many industrial complexes, putting an end to all attempts by elites to keep the crumbling system running. From the ashes of the dead pan-civilisation rose scattered small communities dedicated to simple survival, and a deep reject of anything related to what is now called “high-technology”, in particular electronics and plastics.

While most of the cyberhumans dies during or immediately following the collapse of the Cyberedge era, some, lucky enough to have relatively low-maintenance “enhancements”, have survived the drastic change of society. Due to their dependence on high-technology materials and power sources, they are unwelcome in most reborn communities. They roam the Earth, salvaging what they can from abandoned Cyberedge industrial mega-complexes, and gathering into motley parties to share both skills and companionship.

How to play

Each turn, you pick a location to just loot, or move your camp to and loot. You can loot locations two spots away from your current location (in red on the map), and move to locations one spot away. The map gives you information on all locations, what resource to expect there and how dangerous they are.

You have six team-members, who have daily needs, and their own set of skills which impact how risky the locations are. Team-members can get injured in a mission, they then take three days to get better. If someone is injured during a mission, you only get half the expected loot. Sending injured team-members on mission is possible, but it might not be a good idea because if they get in trouble again, they will automatically die.