Maroon Isles Quest: Two-Player Co-op Text Adventure

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

Maroon Isles Quest is a parody game, built as a proof of concept. It borrows the setting of a classic 1990s adventure game and plays it for laughs ("Hair Today, Bald Tomorrow"). The point is to test a new kind of text adventure. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the owners of the original game.

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.

What's new in it

• A text adventure for two players at once, over the internet. Classic text adventures are single-player. Here, two people join the same quest from their own browsers, and both see every move and every line of the story as it happens.
• You have to work together. Each player is a different character with different abilities: Alexander is the strong one, Jollo is small and quick. Some obstacles only one of you can get past. Others need both at the same moment: both players type together <action>, and it only works when both do.
• Voices, both ways. A narrator reads the scenes aloud, and each character speaks with their own voice. You can also speak your commands instead of typing them.
• Pictures and a map in a text game. Locations have their own illustrations, and a map of the islands sits beside the story. All are drawn in code, so there are no image files.
• Joining is by consent. A stranger is matched into a quest with a free character, but a quest already under way is private. The player inside is asked ("Someone from Canada wants to join you on your quest! Let them join you?") and answers yes or no.
• Nothing to install and no accounts. It runs entirely in the browser, served from your company or a ~$10/yr account from Cloudflare.

Type help in the game for the command list, and newgame to start over after a win.

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; 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 maroon-isles-quest.
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 line collects the pieces the game needs. The second signs you in to Cloudflare in a browser window, then prints a web address ending in workers.dev — that is your copy. Send the link to the person you want to play with.

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; that is the fastest way through it.

Credits and licenses

• Code: MIT. See LICENSE.
• No third-party art, fonts or sound files are included. Scene illustrations are drawn in code, and speech uses the voices built into the browser.
• Maroon Isles Quest was written with AI assistance (Claude).