Arrr You Lost?

The prompt

After three small arcade games I wanted something bigger: a world you could actually visit. An endless sea, islands, a story to keep you sailing, enemies to fight or avoid. Mobile first, one file, nothing to install.

I asked for a plan before any code. It came back with the trick that makes it work: the sea is cut into invisible squares, and each square’s islands come from its coordinates and a single number. Nothing is stored, so sail a hundred leagues away and back and the same island is still there, under the same name. The map is a captain’s, torn into seven pieces.

The working title was Dead Reckoning. I preferred the pun.

The iterations

Eleven versions, in five chapters.

1. Just sailing. Islands called Isle of Mild Regret and Damp Biscuits Cay, a minimap, a ship’s log. One flaw: I could move, but there was no boat on screen. It had been drawn off in the corner; one line fixed it.
2. A reason to stop. Docking, buried treasure, messages in bottles, and a trader selling sails, cannons and hull plating. I asked whether the gold pace was fair; it was.
3. The Navy. Sloops that patrol, spot you, circle and shoot, nastier the further out you go. Your cannons fire on their own: steering and aiming with one thumb is too much. My one complaint was the kraken, a purple blob in a world of sand and teal; it came back as whirlpool water with proper tentacles.
4. The story. Seven islands, seven characters — a hermit who owes the captain money, a lighthouse keeper whose light is decorative, four hundred parrots repeating secrets. The Admiral’s flagship guards the last piece. It is also where I got stuck, literally: docking froze the boat. Three messages to pin down, one word to fix.
5. Atmosphere. Every sound invented on the spot — cannon, coins, gulls, surf — and not one audio file. The music too: Drunken Sailor, free to use since the 1830s (the tune is; famous recordings are not), played note by note by the same little synth. Day and night, and fog that hides the Navy until you hear it.

What I learned

Ask for the plan first when the game is big, and test how the core loop feels — here, steering — before piling on. And when something breaks on my phone but not on the other side, be precise: “the button is there but does nothing” found the bug. “It’s stuck” didn’t.