DECADE

Overview

DECADE is a standalone browser social MMO inside the DECADE community — not a mod and not a server built on someone else’s game. It is built through an AI-orchestrated workflow with human direction over architecture, gameplay systems, art direction, UX, progression balance, and the quality bar every feature has to clear.

Problem

Persistent social MMOs rarely fail because one system is badly built. They fail when progression, economy, world, and social spaces stop agreeing — or when an economy that feels good in hour one collapses by hour fifty.

Approach

Systems are designed to reinforce each other: skilling, economy simulation, world conditions, NPCs and vendors, music integration, and traversable districts validated with placeholder art before production pixel art replaces it. Performance is treated as a design constraint from day one.

Status

Actively in development. Systems are labelled by real status — nothing here claims a finished public release or live multiplayer at scale. Current engineering checkpoints include clean TypeScript across packages, 150+ passing unit tests, and content/world validation with zero errors and zero findings at last recorded audit.

Contributions

• Concept & world design

  Defining an underground digital city built around music and creator culture — districts, spaces, and rules that make it feel like somewhere to live rather than a menu.

• Systems & progression design

  Skills, economy, loot, and pacing designed to hold up across hundreds of hours of play, not just the first session.

• UX & interaction direction

  How the HUD, panels, minimap, and world read together in a browser client — including conflicts like music playback sharing the screen with gameplay.

• AI-orchestrated implementation

  Directing implementation, debugging, and validation through an AI-assisted workflow — every result reviewed and integrated, never accepted unexamined.

• QA & economic balancing

  Screenshot-based visual audits, systematic in-game tours, content validation, and a purpose-built economy simulator used to pressure-test progression.

• Art direction

  Setting a gritty, underground visual identity and running the pipeline that replaces prototype assets with production pixel art once a system is validated.

Systems

• Skilling & gathering

  In Development

  Mining, Fishing, Woodcutting, Cooking, Thieving, and Gathering with physical tool use — progression meant to feel like a grind, not disposable minigames.

• Fishing minigame

  In Development

  An active catch-control minigame tied to physical fishing locations built into the world.

• Cooking progression

  Planned

  Expanding cooking into a full loop — ingredients, recipes, stations, unlocks, and quality that scales with skill.

• Economy & career simulator

  Implemented

  An internal simulator modelling player lives across roughly 1–250 hours, testing play strategies against travel, affordability, upgrades, income, sinks, and pacing.

• Arcade system

  Prototype

  In-world arcade cabinets built as genuinely playable original arcade-style games — inspired by classic genres, never reproducing copyrighted titles.

• NPCs, vendors & tutorial

  In Development

  Vendors with useful dialogue and onboarding that teaches through the world instead of over-handholding.