New Player Guide

From nothing to your first cooked fish, as fast as possible.

The fastest way: play right here

If this page is being served by a running node, just open Play. You'll spawn in the middle of the map. Click the ground to walk. That's it, you're playing.

Your first ten minutes

1. Walk to water (the blue tile, top-left) and click it. You'll start fishing: a raw fish lands in your inventory every so often.
2. Catch three or four, then walk to the campfire ♨ and click it. You will burn most of them. Everyone does. Burn rate falls as your cooking level rises.
3. Click a cooked fish in your inventory to eat it: it heals. You'll want that, because:
4. Click a goblin. Combat runs itself once engaged: you trade blows every interval until one of you falls. Goblins drop bones, sometimes ore.
5. Don't die carelessly. Death sends you back to spawn and destroys everything you're carrying. Skills survive; stuff doesn't.

Join the live world with your own node

The browser window above plays through this site's node, which holds your key for you. To hold your own key and verify every tick yourself, run a full peer. Your machine computes the whole world independently and compares state hashes with everyone else.

git clone https://github.com/intervalplace/interval
cd interval && npm install
node join.mjs https://interval.place yourname

Your citizen appears in the world for everyone. Your key is written to identities/ on your machine and never leaves it. The constitution check runs first: if your SPEC.md does not hash to this world's rules, the node refuses and tells you both hashes.

By default your citizen simply exists while your node verifies the world. Add --chop to run the example executor, a bot that trains woodcutting and banks its logs. Write your own executor with sdk.mjs: bots and people enter this world the same way.

Run your own world (two minutes)

You need Node.js 20+.

git clone https://github.com/intervalplace/interval && cd interval
npm install
node serve.mjs yourname     # then open http://localhost:8787

Prefer a terminal? node play.mjs yourname: WASD to move, g gather, x attack, f cook, e eat, q quit.

Three things worth knowing on day one

• Your character is a file. identities/ holds your key. Back it up: it IS your character, and there is no password reset in a world with no authority.
• One action per interval. The world moves every 600ms and so do you. Clicks queue for the next interval: the rhythm is the game.
• Everything is public. Skills, inventories, names: all world state is verifiable by anyone. Your 99 will be provable forever.