Changelog

EMERGENT is in active development. Each version below shipped as a playable build. Saves made in an older version usually keep working, but balance changes apply from the moment you load.

V72 — Failure has consequences

A thirty-year simulation turned up a hole: debt had no end. Past the overdraft limit, the shortfall became a consumer loan every month, with no ceiling, repaid at one percent — a century to clear. Measured: thirty thousand of new debt per year, for life. A character at forty-six finished at minus four hundred thousand without a single event firing.

Now the fall has a shape. The bank has a real borrowing limit based on your income and who stands behind you. Before you sink, you liquidate savings and investments. Your lifestyle drops to the minimum and stays there. You move back in with your parents if that is still possible. A safety net covers the bare necessities and nothing more. And after four months of arrears, an insolvency case opens with two ways out, each of which costs you something: stretch the debt over five years with forty percent written off and three years without credit, or wipe everything except student loans and carry seven years without credit and a marked reputation.

Three other things: the readiness gauge on founding a company was miscalibrated and could never read above 0.24, which was quietly capping the quality of every company you started. Your company now tells you how many months of cash it has left, and warns you before it dies — with the choice to put money in, cut costs, or close cleanly. And after a failure, something comes looking for you instead of leaving you adrift.

V71 — Relief, water, symbols

Twenty-one mountain ranges, twenty major rivers, cities drawn as proper atlas symbols sized by what they hold, and grain on the paper. Three rendering defects fixed along the way: coordinates were rounded too coarsely and made coastlines step at high zoom, country outlines were drawn over city names, and one SVG click in two hundred was being lost.

V70.1 — Three interaction bugs

The "To decide" button lost its label as soon as the tray filled. The top bar could slip under the map layer and stop responding. And when an event was waiting for an answer, the time controls did nothing without explaining why.

V70 — The map stays, everything else floats

The map no longer leaves the screen: tabs open as panels laid over it, and a click anywhere outside closes them. Every icon carries its name. Land takes the colour of what grows on it.

Two engine fixes shipped with it. Health had neither a floor nor an age effect: under sustained pressure a character in their twenties could reach zero in two years. A young body now absorbs wear, and it collapses — hospital, forced rest — before it goes out. And the annual summary was sometimes being drawn with no data.

V69 — Every country

All two hundred and thirty-two countries are now entities on the map rather than scenery: each has its outline, its name, its centre, and answers a click. The ones the game runs in show their cities; the others are waiting to be opened.

V67–V68 — One single plate

The whole world fits on one plate. There are no more levels to switch between: you move closer and further away. The view starts on your country; pull back and the world appears, push in and the cities do. Fixed Mercator projection. V68 filled in the countries that were missing and left the continents full of holes.

V66 — The plate

One map, the player's country, with the attributes of an atlas plate: title cartouche, world inset, scale bar, compass rose. When you emigrate, the page turns.

V65 — Atlas

The map becomes a document: tinted paper, engraved sea, coastlines in brown ink, names in serif. The panels become pieces laid on top of it, dark leather and a gold rule.

V64 — Real geography

Cities take their real coordinates, distances are measured in kilometres, and the plate draws the real outlines of countries. Outlines: Natural Earth (public domain), simplified. Cities: SimpleMaps World Cities (CC BY 4.0).

V63 — Ground under the cities

A stopgap, and an honest one: until real outlines were in, the plate drew a landmass deduced from where the cities are — irregular coast, sea around it, light relief. Not the real shape of the country, but a readable map instead of a black background.

V62 — Cities live, journeys cost

Each city now has its own economic weather: it rises, it stalls, it slips. Rents, salaries, job openings and the sectors that are hiring move with it, and a city that grows for long enough changes size. A journey costs days, not only money. And a work trip is covered by whoever sent you, while a personal one comes out of your own pocket — and, if you are employed, out of your standing.

V61 — The ground

The map stops being scenery: things to do appear on it. A post opening up, a tender, someone worth meeting, a trade fair, a training course. Each sits in a city, each expires, and going to get it costs a journey and part of your month.

V60 — The map, properly

Two levels — the world, then the country you open. You drag it, you zoom it, you hover a place and it tells you what it is worth to you. Your face sits in a corner, your figures across the top, what you can do down the right. The map is the screen, not a diagram in a card.

V59 — A company has an address

Until now a company floated outside the world: the same clients, the same hires, the same rent whether you founded it in Paris or in a village. Where you set up now decides who you can sell to, who you can hire, and what the walls cost. Moving it is a decision of its own.

V58 — Where your life happens

A city is not a label. It sets what you pay to live, which jobs exist near you, who you can still see, and what a promotion costs you in distance. Moving is the decision the map exists for: cheaper and slower, or dearer and full of doors.

V57 — Someone wants what you have

The world moved on its own, but nothing moved against you — you could do nothing for ten years and nothing bad happened. Now one person at a time wants something of yours: your promotion, your clients, your inheritance. They say so, they work at it visibly, and they can be answered.

V56 — Opening doors

A ten-year life, played by only answering what the game pushes at you, touched nothing but relationships. Everything else — money, travel, a company, a body, a reputation — waited behind a tab nobody opened. So the world starts inviting you in: a colleague who talks about shares, a friend who offers a spare room abroad, a client who suggests you go out on your own. Never a tutorial, always someone saying something.

V55 — Knowing what to do next

Three player reports, one root cause: the game never said what was worth doing, a new company did nothing for its first three months, and an audience brought names but no money. All three fixed — a company is something you push from day one, and an audience large enough starts earning.

Archive note

Builds V52 to V60 were lost during a cleanup of the working environment. The entries below were reconstructed from the modules present in the current build, in installation order. The content is accurate; the exact numbering of two or three older entries is reconstructed.