Start with your next step
The highlighted guide above the map explains what to do now. Its main button takes you to the right plot or control. Follow the short checklist, then mark yourself ready when you are finished. All available operations stay expanded. Use Orders, Crew, Log, Comms and Report to switch panels.
Earn the highest total wealth through land, M.U.L.E.s, credits, and goods, while helping the colony meet its shared wealth target. Hoarding every resource can leave your own trading partners unable to produce.
01Claim your land
Select a free plot and submit a grant claim. Claims resolve together; poorer colonists win ties. Unfulfilled claims receive another free plot. The central town is shared colony land: it cannot be claimed, bought, sold, or developed. Its reserved footprint grows with the map. Land auctions offer a variable number of extra plots and land listed by colonists.
02Put M.U.L.E.s to work
During development, outfit a M.U.L.E. for food, energy, smithore, or crystite. Rivers favor food, plains favor energy, and mountains favor smithore. Assay plots without a credit fee to discover their private crystite grade; surveying normally uses one development action. Nearby grades can help you locate richer deposits.
03Keep production running
Food fuels your development allowance. Energy powers your non-energy M.U.L.E.s. Shortages cut your effectiveness; surplus goods can spoil if the host enables spoilage.
04Trade with neighbors
Each resource has a live auction with a fifteen-second invitation. Choose Buy, Sell, or Watch. Hold +/− or the arrow keys to move your price; when the dashed lines meet, units trade one at a time on a steady beat. The store displays its stock and both prices. “Keep this many” protects only a seller’s reserve. A buyer steps back once upon reaching needed supplies, then may move up again to buy extra. Crystite sells at an offworld price. You can buy it back during its auction; remaining store crystite ships offworld when the auction closes.
A classic, adapted for the browser
The defaults follow the Atari Tournament economy, checked against the original manual and a disassembly of the Atari game. The map and resource supply scale with the crew, and the host can change the rules. By default, development is simultaneous with a food-dependent action allowance, live plot giveaways are enabled, and all auctions use the shared live floor. Any player can pause an auction; movement and trading slow its countdown. The host can disable timed plot giveaways in favor of simultaneous claims. Joystick movement, the Wampus chase, and pub timing become plot actions and random rewards. There are no computer opponents. Choose one of eight species in the lobby; the host controls species handicaps and optional bonuses. The default wealth target scales the original $60,000 four-player goal; the host can change it. With colony failure enabled, a colony ends if food or energy is completely exhausted and no M.U.L.E. produces that resource.
Production & supply
Each non-energy M.U.L.E. requires one energy unit held before the harvest. An energy shortage cancels randomly selected developments’ harvests, which can include energy developments under the Atari rule. Adjacent plots making the same good get a production bonus, as does every group of three matching outfits you own. A plot produces at most eight units. Food requirements rise as the game progresses. Food and energy spoil after consumption, before the next harvest; smithore and crystite follow their storage limits.
Two units of smithore sold to the store can become one M.U.L.E. for the next round, up to the corral’s capacity. The machine price follows smithore prices. Crystite’s offworld price changes independently of local supply. Goods in your wealth total use current market values.
Original events & house rules
Original events have distinct timing, eligibility, effects, and occurrence limits. A disabled, exhausted, or ineligible event may leave a quiet turn. The host can toggle every event, adjust limits, and define custom effects. With personal event scaling enabled, the base use limit is multiplied once per four colonists, rounding up; colony event limits stay unchanged. Custom catch-up cash grants are optional and off by default.
Connection keys & hosting
Everyone must open this same hosted app. Share the connection key or invite link to invite players into the lobby; keys do not connect separate app installations. Each browser stores its private player token for reconnecting; the invite link contains only the room key. Use a separate browser profile to play as another colonist. Joining closes when the colony launches. The game continues as connected browsers poll the server, even when the host disconnects.
Any player can pause and resume a live resource or land auction. The host can also pause other phases, advance phases, transfer hosting, customize all events, adjust timers, and expand the map. An automatic map scales to the crew, with no fixed player count when the player cap is zero. Practical capacity depends on your server and device.
Development actions
Installing, refitting, moving, removing, assaying, and hunting use your action allowance. You need an available M.U.L.E. and enough credits to install one. Refit an owned machine by choosing a new outfit and selecting Refit. To move a machine, select its plot, choose Move, then select an empty plot you own. Returning a M.U.L.E. refunds its current base price; outfits are not refunded. The host can set a M.U.L.E. runaway chance from 0% (disabled) to 100%. Each new installation or move rolls that chance; a runaway loses the machine and outfit, with no purchase refund; the normal action cost still applies (including a Leggite’s free first move when race bonuses are enabled). Stationary refits are safe. The plot inspector shows the active risk, and mid-phase changes apply next development phase. A pub visit trades your remaining actions for a credit reward and ends your development turn. During development, select an owned plot to list it for next round’s land auctions. Set a minimum bid and optionally choose one buyer; the installed M.U.L.E. transfers with the land. Listings use no action and can be withdrawn before the auction.
Your colony in motion
Colonists and M.U.L.E.s travel along the map grid using horizontal and vertical steps. These local animations follow confirmed game actions; you can keep using your controls while they play. Event artwork animates at affected locations on the map. Personal events appear to everyone in a popup, with “You” for the affected player and their name for others. Play pauses for ten seconds per personal event so everyone can read; the full text remains in Recent events. Reduced-motion preferences replace walking with a brief arrival marker.
The town belongs to everyone
The gold border marks the reserved central town. Depending on the map dimensions, it occupies the center one, two, or four plots, or nine plots on a large map. Town land stays public through auctions, events, and map expansion. Select it to view the town information.
A map that stays with you
The map fits the available space by default. Select Orders, Crew, Log, Comms, or Report to switch the lower or side panel while keeping the map visible. Zoom in for detail; very large worlds can be panned with the overview map. On a phone, the map is taller and the whole page scrolls. Select a plot to reach its controls below; panels have no separate vertical scrolling.
Keep your favorite match rules
In Colony settings, open Save or restore match settings. Generate a code to keep the selections currently in the dialog, including custom events. Paste a saved code or import its settings file, review the loaded draft, then choose Save colony settings. A settings code starts another match with those rules; it does not restore players or match progress.
Live plot giveaway
Live plot giveaway is on by default; the host can change it in Economy & conditions. Watch the bright border move across free plots, then tap the highlighted plot, press Space, or use the Claim button. Claims for the same plot share its display window plus a 250 ms arrival allowance; the poorer colonist wins. The default-on random fallback gives missed grants a random unclaimed plot after the sweep; the host can disable it. One complete sweep replaces the usual land-grant timer. The host can slow the sweep or advance a very large map; pause freezes it for everyone.
Optional classic species time allowance
The original gave Flapper more development time and Humanoid less, with no documented species advantage in auction movement. This optional rule converts those ratios into actions: Flapper 9/7 of the Food-adjusted allowance, Humanoid 5/7, and others unchanged. Fractions carry between rounds, with at least one action. The shared turn timer and auction speed remain the same for everyone.
Music & sound
The ♫ button controls title music. Options has the same Music on/off control plus a separate Sound on/off button for effects. The title recording loops on the homepage, continues from its current position when you enter a lobby, without repeating, and stops when the colony launches. It loops again during round standings and final results until you pass those screens. Music is enabled by default; if your browser blocks autoplay, any ordinary click, tap, or key press can start it. Each special event has its own sound, while major stages have a stronger tone and individual auction changes a softer one. Muting audio never removes visual feedback.
Live auctions
All resource and paid-land auctions use the live floor. Each starts with a 15-second invitation and a sound when bidding begins. The store shows its stock, what it pays, and what it asks. The store pays line is the trade floor; its asking price is the ceiling while stock remains. Buyers start below these lines and sellers above. Hold +/− or the arrow keys to move up to 20 credits per second. Both dashed lines meet at a trade. Every fill is one unit, with at least one second between fills for each participant. Movement and trading slow the countdown fivefold.
“Keep this many” applies only to selling: it defaults to Food/Energy needs and zero for minerals. At that reserve, your seller returns to the starting line. Buyers step back once when needed supplies are reached, then may move up again to buy extra. Buying has no inventory limit. H, N and C beneath each colonist mean Have, Needed next and Credits. Watchers stand below their same lane. Land goes to the highest funded actual bid when bidding closes; poorer players win ties. Ready keeps a land bid and withdraws a resource quote. View map · stop withdraws before closing the window. Any player can pause/resume; pauses clear quotes and confirmed trades stand.
Text size & client options
Options on the landing page, game header or auction window controls this browser’s text size, music, and sound effects. Automatic text size fits your display; use the slider or buttons for a saved choice from 100–150%. The map keeps its fitted pixel geometry. The host also has End this session in Options: confirming closes the room permanently for everyone and clears its saved rejoin entry when each browser next connects. Leave only exits your current browser.
Play at your pace
Mark yourself ready when finished. The next phase starts when everyone is ready or the timer expires. The host can set a phase timer to zero to wait for everyone, or pause to stop automatic phase changes. Resource auctions settle before moving to the next resource.