A multiplayer hex crawl in your browser. Spiritually descended from the MUDs of the early internet, dressed for the modern web, built by one person who didn't want to wait for someone else to make it.
A shared fantasy world you explore hex by hex, fight monsters in, and slowly come to know. Most of the action happens in rich text — descriptions, dialogue, the rattle of a combat round — anchored by hand-curated illustrations and a clean modern UI. You play in a browser tab. Your friends play in their browser tabs. Sometimes you bump into each other in a tavern.
One programmer's attempt to braid two things together: the text adventures and MUDs that taught a generation of nerds that words could be a place, and the tabletop hex crawls that taught the next generation that exploration is its own kind of story. Neither tradition needed AAA budgets to be magical. Neither does this.
A living world with deeper dungeons, traveling merchants, regional cities with their own economies, parties of adventurers taking on bigger threats, and slow-burn world events that change the map. Built in public, in bite-sized updates, by someone who'd rather ship something playable today than promise something perfect for next year.
The honest version. You can play right now. Deindria is real but mid-construction — here's where the build line is today.
Make an account, roll up to six characters across five classes — Magic User, Fighter, Monk, Ranger, Rogue — and step out of the tavern into the open hexes of Deindria.
/help, /where, /roll NdM, /give, /me, /beer.Pieces that are designed and partially live, but not yet pulling their full weight:
| Server | Mode | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethercrawl Main | Free (testing) | ● live | Connect → |
» Free to play during the open beta. When subscription billing ships, the Main server moves to a $7.99/month plan with a 7-day trial. Beta accounts will get a grace period — details in Discord.
One subscription. Full access to Ethercrawl Main, with all your characters and their progress. The subscription pays for the servers, the development time, and eventually a real art budget. That's it.
Same world. Same engine. Different door. Characters minted as NFTs on Base, with on-chain persistence and no subscription. If truly owning your character is the part that excites you, that's where to go. If it isn't, you're already where you want to be.
Visit Heroes of Deindria ↗Ethercrawl is my attempt to recreate the fun I had playing text adventures on a beige PC and, later, MUDs over a 28.8k modem — while folding in the hex-crawl-and-encounter-table feeling of a long tabletop campaign.
I'm one person. I write the code, design the systems, build the world, run the servers, and answer the Discord. The game is rough in places because it's a beta and because there's exactly as much of it as I've had time to build. It will get better, in small visible increments, week after week, the way a slow campfire becomes a hearth.
If you played MUDs in the 90s, or you've been running hex crawls at your kitchen table, or you just like the idea of an RPG you can drop into for fifteen minutes from a browser tab — this is for you. Come hang out in the Discord. Tell me what you want the game to become.
Built in public, in bite-sized updates. Here's what's shipping, what's next, and what's someday.
No. The world is described in text, but every location, character, and scene has accompanying static artwork, and the interface uses clean modern UI affordances — clickable hexes, action buttons, a real inventory pane, interior maps with quad-by-quad movement. Think of it as a text RPG that grew up on the modern web.
Multi-User Dungeon. The 1980s/90s precursor to MMORPGs, almost always text-based. Players moved through shared fantasy worlds by typing commands and reading descriptions. Many MUDs are still running today, with communities decades old. Ethercrawl is a love letter to that tradition, with a more accessible interface.
Yes. Your account holds up to six characters; their gold, bank balance, location, and progress all persist. Close the tab and come back tomorrow — your roster is waiting. (This wasn't always true; if a friend remembers a wipe-on-disconnect Ethercrawl, it's been a while.)
Yes. There's a longer post about why and how I'm thinking about it here. Short version: I'm one programmer with no art budget, and the alternative is no art at all. When the project can afford to commission human illustrators, that's where new revenue goes first.
It runs in any modern browser, including mobile, but the interface is currently designed for desktop play. A proper mobile-first layout is on the roadmap.
No. Ethercrawl is a regular browser game with a regular monthly subscription (free during open beta). If on-chain character ownership interests you, Heroes of Deindria runs on the same engine in the same world.
Free during the open beta. $7.99 / month once subscription billing ships, with a 7-day trial. No microtransactions, no premium currency, no item shop.
Play. Find bugs. Tell me what you want. The Discord is the front door — every feature on the roadmap started as someone in there saying "what if?"
The Discord is small and friendly and full of the kind of conversations you'd hope for. New builds get announced there first. Bug reports get answered there fastest. World-building decisions sometimes get made there.