The challenge
Make expansion, recruitment, and cooperation useful without letting an opening rush or an undefended throne decide the game before players have meaningful choices.
All projectsPlayable prototype
Games & multiplayer strategy
Crowns & Commons
A browser-based multiplayer strategy game about territory, shared resources, and the risk of leaving your throne undefended.
Visit the game site- Role
- Game design & AI-assisted development
- Focus
- Multiplayer strategy & shared economies
- Stage
- Playable prototype
The project
In Crowns & Commons, players move a monarch across a contested map, build their faction's economy, and recruit AI-controlled defenders and raiders. The monarch can travel; the throne stays put. A successful expedition can strengthen the faction, but sending too much of the army away can leave its seat of power exposed.
I led the concept, mechanics, presentation choices, and play-feedback loop, working with Theo, an AI development assistant, on implementation, debugging, testing, and deployment. Revisions grew out of specific play problems: opening rushes, premature throne captures, depleted resources, defensive bot decisions, and the cost of recruiting more units while keeping the existing army supplied.
The prototype combines a shared faction economy with an authoritative multiplayer server and bots that play under the same rules as humans. Turn-based play is the default, with an optional real-time mode. Tap-to-move controls and a mobile action dock support play on smaller screens, though interface density and clarity still need external play feedback.
The approach
Tie tactical actions to a shared economy, give factions fair opening territory and preparation time, and enforce throne capture and combat rules on the server. Use hands-on play and seeded bot simulations to revise the mechanics, then seek external feedback on balance and usability.
Go deeper
More from this project.
01
The cost of leaving home
How resource depletion, a shared vault, recruitment, and throne defense shape the decision to expand or stay close to home.
Read more 02The server, bots, and test evidence
Authoritative game state, privacy-filtered bot observations, AWS deployment, and what the release-candidate checks establish.
Read moreWhat matters
Built around the use case.
Expansion has a cost
Raiding, recruiting, and supplying units all draw on resources that could protect the faction's throne.
Bots share the rules
Defenders and raiders use bounded planning and privacy-filtered observations, with the server enforcing the same actions available to human players.
Human design direction
I chose the mechanics and revisions; Theo assisted with implementation and validation. Play feedback guided changes to fairness, resource use, and defense.
Evidence with limits
Source tests, packaged-backend checks, local load scenarios, and seeded simulations support the prototype. Human balance and mobile clarity remain questions for external playtests.