The public roadmap · Reviewed against BUILD 51

A small game with an alarming amount of future

I started with one blocky city and a straightforward plan: let people mine it, rob it and annoy the police. The plan has since developed complications.

Start at the first bad idea Play what actually exists

No datesNo percentagesNo promises wearing concept artThe game may object

How to read this thing

Direction, not a hostage note

Only Playable now describes the beta you can load today. Everything after that is ordered ambition: work I am doing, work I intend to do, and one gloriously unreasonable destination.

Roadmaps are famously accurate documents, which is why this one contains no dates.

  1. Shipped Where it began

    One life. One city. Several bad decisions.

    The first real version already had the argument at the centre of Hard Block Life: the city should not be scenery. Roads, walls, trees and ground should be material. Crime should create heat. Getting home alive should matter more than the robbery.

    Early police strategy was essentially “run at the problem.” It was a start.
    What actually shipped
    • A breakable voxel city that doubles as shelter and inventory.
    • Mining, building, lairs, stashes and a one-life crime run.
    • Shops, stolen vehicles, police heat and score banked on escape.
    • Shared seeded rooms for 2–8 people making coordinated mistakes.
    A player building a voxel lair in Hard Block Life
    Foundation Break the world. Carry it home.
  2. Playable now BUILD 51

    The city has developed opinions.

    The current beta is a compact crime sandbox with mining, construction, crafting, cars, wildlife, online rooms and a police force that comes from somewhere and pursues what it actually knows.

    Playable now means I have personally made these bugs someone else’s problem.
    What you can play today
    • Mine roads and terrain, craft useful parts, and build a defensible lair.
    • Rob shops, steal cars, attract police attention and bank the score if you escape.
    • Drive through traffic, marked roads and a day-to-night voxel world.
    • Play alone or create a temporary room for up to eight players.
    A police pursuit through a Hard Block Life city
    Current beta The escape is still the job.
  3. Building The next sequence

    Make every bad decision feel heavier.

    Before the world gets wider, the things inside it need weight. The immediate work is crafting depth, fairer and clearer city behaviour, physical crashes and damage, and sound and motion that stop feeling like a depressed office printer.

    If a shotgun sounds like a receipt machine, this stage has failed.
    What I am building toward
    • Removable weapon attachments and a faster, clearer workbench loop.
    • Better pedestrian, traffic and police behaviour on browser and phone.
    • Vehicle impacts with mass, rotation, local damage and blocky detached parts.
    • Recorded gunfire, physical explosions and held tools with an actual contact moment.
  4. Horizon The Big World

    Make somewhere worth getting lost in.

    The horizon is a generated world with geography that explains itself: mountains make valleys, rivers shape roads, roads connect distinct cities, and cities contain buildings you can actually run into when your getaway planning reaches its traditional conclusion.

    “Make the map bigger” is several engineering disciplines wearing a trench coat.
    What the horizon contains
    • Mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, fjords, coastlines, farmland and forests.
    • Larger zoned cities with landmarks, parks, interiors, stairs and rooftops.
    • Highways, long-distance traffic and eventually public transport.
    • Fire, ambulances, fire crews and wildlife that reacts to the world around it.
    The rural landscape beyond a Hard Block Life city
    Big World Roads should eventually go somewhere.
  5. Dream The world remembers

    Give the world a past. Then let players ruin it.

    The big dream is a world that existed before the player and remembers what happens afterward. People have names, homes, relationships, memories and motives. A mine, grave, weapon or abandoned house points back to events that really happened in that world.

    Most legends will be weather, crime, lies or somebody getting confused. A vanishingly small number may be properly weird.
    What the dream means
    • Named people with households, work, relationships, routines and bounded memories.
    • Generated settlement histories, migration, trade, disasters, crimes and succession.
    • Ruins, old mines, graves, artifacts and rumors with real provenance.
    • Persistent player consequences and, eventually, an authoritative shared world.
Terms of unreasonable ambition

The small print, but readable

This page is meant to be open, not accidentally contractual. Here is exactly what the labels mean.

01

No dates

This is one-person development. A calendar would mostly document new and inventive ways to be wrong.

02

No fake precision

A feature is not 78% complete because somebody coloured most of a rectangle.

03

Now means now

Only the current-beta chapter describes BUILD 51. Everything else is direction and may move after testing.

You have reached the irresponsible end

Come make the plan worse

Play the game that exists, tell me what is funny, tell me what is broken, and occasionally enjoy the fact that those are the same thing.

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