The first build: a cave, a fire and a lentil field

This week Koino went from a plan to something you can open in a browser. Here's what exists now.

The fire in the cave

The top of the home page shows the cave of Adullam at night, with the mighty men gathered around a fire. It isn't a video: it's a small 3D scene that runs in your browser, and the fire lights the faces around it as it flickers. If your device asks for less motion, or it's on a slow connection, you get a still picture of the same scene instead.

The warriors around the fire already wear the outfits they'll wear in the game: short tunics over trousers, each in their own colour.

The Lentil Field

The first playable piece is a prototype of The Lentil Field, from 2 Samuel 23:11–12. Shammah's people fled from the Philistines, "but he stood in the midst of the ground, and defended it."

In the prototype, 2 to 4 players each defend a patch of lentils from waves of raiders. You can shove raiders back with your shield, but if you leave your own patch, you lose lentils. After three minutes, whoever has the most lentils left wins.

The art is placeholder shapes. What we're testing is the part you can't see:

• Party codes. One person creates a room and gets a code like LENTIL-7F3Q. Everyone else types it in. No accounts.
• A shared game. The game itself runs on a server, twenty times a second, so every player sees the same field. Your own hero responds instantly, and the server corrects it if needed.
• Phones. On a touch screen you get a stick to move and a button to bash.

Try it

Open the prototype, create a room and send the code to a friend, or open it in two browser windows. Tell us what felt good and what didn't: hello@koino.party.