Vveered.orgAI-made games and utils
✉ support@veered.orgPlay Merlot
Home › Multiplayer games

Carmine

Carmine (Swarm): Two-Player Real-Time Strategy Game

Why Carmine? Carmine dye is made from swarms of cochineal insects.

▶ PlayInstall
✨ Install with Claude's help

Not sure how to install this? Let an AI assistant walk you through it, step by step, on your own system.

  1. Copy the instructions below.
  2. Open Claude (a free account works) and paste them in.
  3. Answer its questions and follow along, doing the typing yourself.

Claude in a web browser cannot reach your computer: it reads the instructions, asks about your system, and tells you what to type and what each command does, one step at a time. You stay in control of everything that actually runs.

Open Claude ↗View as text

Using Claude Code? That is the version that runs in a terminal on your own machine, so it can do the downloading and installing itself, asking before each step. Paste this into it instead:

Open in Claude Code ↗needs the Claude Desktop app

Carmine (Swarm): Two-Player Real-Time Strategy Game

Carmine was the prototype for Merlot: the swarm battle it started as grew into Merlot's team strategy game.

Play it now: swarm.veered.org · more games at veered.org

Swarm

Swarm is a free two-player real-time strategy game that runs in the browser. Each side starts with a base and a stream of minions. Drag-select your minions, send them at the towers, and capture your opponent's base. Nothing to install, no account needed: share the link and play.

Please test before relying on it

This is shared as-is, with no warranty. It works on my own computers, but your system, settings and software versions may differ, so please try it in a safe setting first. If something doesn't work, you can ask Claude (or another AI coding assistant) to look into it, and I'd appreciate hearing what you found and how you fixed it. You are also welcome to just let me know at support@veered.org, and I'll look into it.

Put your own copy on the internet

You do not have to be a programmer, and it costs nothing to start: the game is hosted by Cloudflare, who will run something this small for free, and a domain name of your own is about $10 a year if you want one.

  1. Get the game. Download the source (the button at the top of this page) and unzip it. You now have a folder called carmine-swarm.
  2. Open a free Cloudflare account at dash.cloudflare.com/sign-up. An email address and a password; no card needed.
  3. Install Node.js from nodejs.org — take the version it offers — and install it like any other program. This is what does the uploading.
  4. Open a terminal in that folder (on Windows, right-click the folder and choose "Open in Terminal"; on a Mac, Terminal) and type these two lines, one at a time:
npm install
npx wrangler deploy

The first collects the pieces the game needs; the second signs you in to Cloudflare in a browser window and then prints a web address ending in workers.dev. That is your copy — send the link to whoever you want to play against.

To try it on your own computer first, type npx wrangler dev instead and open http://localhost:8787 in two tabs. If something goes wrong, paste the error into Claude and ask what it means.

Information for nerds
  • Server: a Cloudflare Worker with Durable Objects (src/). One Room Durable Object holds the players' WebSockets and runs the 20 Hz simulation tick (src/game.js). The tick stops when the room empties so the object can be evicted.
  • Client: a single self-contained page (public/index.html). Sound effects are synthesised with the Web Audio API, so there are no audio assets.
  • Stats: a Stats Durable Object keeps one row per finished match, readable at /api/stats?key=STATS_KEY&days=N.
  • Requirements: Node.js 22 or later.
  • Optional settings: cp .dev.vars.example .dev.vars for local runs; STATS_KEY is set in production with npx wrangler secret put STATS_KEY.
  • Your own hostname: uncomment the [[routes]] block in wrangler.toml and deploy again.

Credits and licenses

Information for nerds: the source code

Everything this project is made of, as committed: the code, its README files and its license. No build step or account needed to read it.

⬇ Download source (.zip)

carmine-swarm.zip · 149 KB · released under the license stated on this page.

Please test before relying on these tools. They are shared as-is, with no warranty. They work on my own computers, but your system, settings and software versions may differ, so please try them in a safe setting first. If something doesn't work, you can ask Claude (or another AI coding assistant) to look into it, and I'd appreciate hearing what you found and how you fixed it. You are also welcome to just let me know at support@veered.org, and I'll look into it.