Gobi

Gobi is a minimal desert adventure game in the lineage of early strategy games like The Oregon Trail. It is based on my memories of a shareware game I used to play on my Mac System 7 in the mid-90s, a game that came on a CD-Rom with 100 other shareware games. I haven't been able to find that game online and can't remember its title, so I've attempted to rebuild it from my memory. Rather than attempt to remake the original graphics I have opted to use images

The graphics and sound were different. This is my take. The photographs come from Ruins of Desert Cathay: personal narrative of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China, written by Hungarian-born British archaeologist Aurel Stein in 1912. Stein was celebrated as an archaeologist, particularly for his discovery of the Mogao caves (Cave of the Thousand Buddhas) and his scholarship on the thousands of historical manuscripts interred there. In today's light he was also clearly a plunderer as many of these manuscripts were removed and brought to the United Kingdom. Stein largely lived in a tent in the region of Kashmir in the Himalayas, spending time translating found texts. During one of his many exhibitions he lost several toes to frostbite.

Credits

The music is Uighur Traditional music, recording 2. (Instrumental) by RTB45 on Freesound.com, recorded in Turpan/Turfan/Tulufan.

Additional audio: excerpt from Desert insects by Bruno Auzet on Freesound.com, recorded in Biskra, Algeria.

TODO:

• add more possibilities for interactions with nomads, more search results
• when oasis roll generates that it won't be displayed, then have text say "You thought you saw an oasis ahead but it turns out to be a mirage."
• flexbox for responsive design to work on tablet/phone
• fix reset and end states
• add gold?
• add sound effects - hurt camel, oasis water sound, hurt in an attack from nomads