Welcome to Dark Forest, a few-rules webRTC game where the real-world network is the worldmap.
You are a little node in the dark. Can you build a network and keep it alive?
The gameplay can be as simple or complex as you wish.
If there are no other nodes, just leave your browser open and wait. Maybe they will find you.
The question is: do you want to be found.
To learn about your world, simply select the "probe" action and click on another node. If the other node is
online (and not malicious), they will automatically respond by sharing parts of their world with you.
Delete malicious or enemy nodes by selecting the "delete" action and click on the node you wish to delete.
Note: the hard-coded "prime peer" and "creator" nodes will re-appear after a page refresh without custom
code.
Send custom data to other nodes by selecting the "message" action, typing or pasting text (or UTF-8
representation of binary data) into the input field, and click on the node to send the message to. This is
how alliances can be formed, with code shared between allies to automate tasks, etc.
"Bots" can be run in several ways: opening a new browser tab, clearing localStorage and refreshing the page,
opening the page in a different browser or on a different device, or by using a headless solution like
NodeJS Puppeteer.
While not required, the player is strongly encouraged to learn how to write and execute javascript code in
the browser console or by creating browser extensions. The game exposes the full libraries of tweetnacl
(cryptography) and peerJS(webRTC), and also provides some encoding/decoding utilities.