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Explore Otherworld in an open-ended text-based browser game

Otherworld is a text-based, sandbox-style browser game, where you experience the world through the eyes of one or more roleplaying characters. Invent your character's unique personality and set your own goals. Advance through a network of unique locations and gather new resources. Craft various items and leave your mark on the world through custom descriptions.

Otherworld takes place in the distant past, where bedsprings and spinning wheels are considered high tech. Everyone makes their own iron and steel, producing items such as tools, boats, and horse carts. No one has ever heard of such modern inventions as firearms, plastic, flying machines, or electricity. It's mostly a peaceful world – even though you might get mauled by a bear if you're unlucky.

In the beginning, you wake up in a strange place, wrapped in a burial gown. Someone has placed coins over your eyes. You feel hungry and thirsty. You can barely carry anything. Your immediate goals are to increase your carrying capacity and find a source of food and clean water. As you level up, you unlock more crafting options, enabling you to pick your own path of advancement.

All characters coexist in a shared world, divided into 13 zones filled with increasingly tougher wild animals. Travel around and discover new locations and resources. Buy and tend to livestock, and harvest resources, such as milk and eggs. Discover the varied cooking recipes.

You start off with minimal carrying capacity, challenging you to craft increasingly better containers as you unlock new content. At level 7, you unlock the hand cart, allowing you to haul large amounts of resources between locations. You can also build a boat or a horse cart.


Otherworld is currently in closed beta. If you don't have an account, come to the Discord channel and find out how you can get one.

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Quick Start Guide

Gather resources, level up to unlock new crafting recipes. Craft various items and increase your carrying capacity. Craft weapons, shields, and armor to fend off against wild animals. Explore the world and discover new places and rare resources. Keep going until you find the edge of the known world, or settle down, build a house and take care of domesticated animals. Get to know the other inhabitants of the world. Make friends or enemies, and learn from them.

The tutorial zone consists of 3 locations (+ 1 secret location, but you don't want to go there!) It's a no-distractions, simplified environment, where you can safely learn the core mechanics, such as scouting, traveling, gather, crafting, and baking things in an oven.

You need to craft a primitive weapon to unlock Zone 2. One of the locations in the tutorial zone has a stone deposit, and two of them have wood deposits. (It's also possible to get wood and stone from the "random finds" icons, so while it's possible to finish the tutorial without visiting all 3 main locations, you gain more XP if you visit all of them.)

Everyone starts at level 0. At level 1, you unlock the recipe for a stone cleaver. At level 2, you unlock stone axe and stone spear. Any action that spends AP or uses timers rewards you with XP. Also defeating animals in combat is rewarded with XP, but it might be difficult without a weapon. Once you have a weapon, you are ready to move on to Zone 2.

The main world starts from Zone 2. Each zone has its own unlock requirements. You can scout for locations either in your current zone, or the next zone, provided that it has been unlocked. The first time you visit a location, you explore it, and after that, it will cost less AP to visit on subsequent visits.

While traveling consumes water, you can go quite far before your thirst gets critical. If you put water inside a waterskin, it will be consumed automatically as you travel. If you travel on a boat or in a horse cart, you can build a barrel on board and all characters inside the vehicle will automatically consume water from the barrel when traveling.

Automated characters are marked with the tag NPC. Everyone else is controlled by a real player. The game purges inactive characters periodically, so everyone you see has been online at least within 2 weeks. People are generally happy to share resources and machinery.

You can find wild animals through hunting or run into them by random chance. By default, there are three possible approaches: Fight, flee, or intimidate. If you craft a snare, you can trap the animal and prevent it from running away - or coming after you if you back off. If you manage to kill the animal before it runs away, you get meat and usually also hide, which can be turned into leather. If the animal is giving you a hard time, you should either flee or try to intimidate it. Aggressive animals such as wolves are more likely to give chase.

Note that currently animals don't make a move if you don't, so waiting for someone else to deal with it can also be an option. Leaving the location when you have an unresolved encounter causes the animal to attack and attempt to give chase.

Once you reach level 4, start looking into making iron. Iron is made from iron ore and coal, while steel is made of iron and coal. There are smelters in the central towns, and it's possible to build a new one with no tools if you stumble upon a location that doesn't have one yet.

Note that it's not possible to make iron in the tutorial region, due to lack of resources, since characters are only meant to stay there long enough to get a grasp of the core mechanics.

Characters gradually gain hunger, even while idle, but moreso when crafting and traveling. While you can eat raw vegetables, it’s also possible to make several types of prepared food if you have a mixing bowl (a fired clay pot, an iron pot, or a barrel will also do). Mix the ingredients to get the intermediary raw product, then cook it in a pot or bake it in an oven. There's a list of receipes available on the mixing page. If a recipe is not recognized, it makes slop, which can be cooked to increase its nutritional value.

If your character is starving, they will start losing health. Currently the lowest you can go is 1 HP. That makes you very fragile and anyone can defeat you in combat and take your stuff.

Some of the locations and zones require a boat to access. The locations are sorted out by which lake, sea, or river they border. The same location can border multiple bodies of water. When sailing on a boat, all passengers will consume water from a barrel on board, provided that one has been crafted.

Method 1: Craft items and sell them to traders. Lavender is found in the tutorial zone, Charlotte in Zone 2. They also buy wood and refined resources, such as cooked food.

Method 2: Work on odd jobs. Older characters can set up jobs for low level characters. They are often demeaning but it's an honest living.

Method 3: There are creatures known as lost souls scattered around the world. When you come upon one, read their profile to find out where they long to be and lead them to the destination. Upon getting there, they give you coins and a random reward.

Below are the links to the human-readable terms of service and privacy policy. Nowadays, the site also has an official privacy policy and terms and conditions that can be hard to understand for anyone who's not a lawyer. For regular people, it can be more useful to read the links below to find out what to concentrate on.

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