Narrative · Strategy · History
Vladivostok Fortress
A narrative strategy game about building the world's last and biggest fortress, told through an engineer officer's album from 1899.
You land at Vladivostok in April 1899, forty-one days out of Odessa: a junior engineer officer with a commission, a modest salary and no authority worth the name.
Ahead of you is a ridge of forts, lunettes, batteries and redoubts, most of them still lines on a plan. Behind you is a council that sits every August, asks how much you delivered, and sets next year’s money on the answer. You will not build any of it yourself. You send other men, and find out which of them can be trusted with a work site.
- Plays on
- Browser · Tablet
- Languages
- EN · RU
A month is a turn
April to October the ground takes a spade: you commit crews, buy stone, set pay, and decide whether to stand over a foreman or trust him. November to March the bay ices over, the crews scatter, and nothing rises. That is when the letters get written and the dinners get held.
Two purses, and many people who want something
The crown’s money and your own are not the same money. One route is cheap virtue that everyone can see; the other is expensive vice that nobody can, until an auditor comes.
The army, the navy, the merchants and the contractors each keep their own book on you, and so do a labour contractor, a warehouse manager who is skimming, a widow from the ship out, and a staff officer who will one day be asked what happened here. Doors open by introduction, and they stay open.
Good to know
- Plays in the browser, best on a computer or a tablet. Nothing to install.
- English and Russian.
- A development build: Book I’s machinery is complete and playable end to end; the story is being written chapter by chapter.
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