coldharbor

Cold Harbor

A multiplayer Severance-inspired macrodata refinement game. Find the “scary” cluster of numbers (they grow, shake, spin, flicker…), box-select them, and drag them into a bin to refine them.

It’s a shared, global effort: everyone online works toward refining 500,000 macrodata across five bins (100,000 each). Every refinement — from any player — is saved to Postgres and broadcast live, so the bins at the bottom show the group’s global progress filling in real time.

Stack

• Node + Express — serves the static client and the HTTP server
• ws — WebSockets for real-time sync across sessions
• Postgres (pg) — persistent, shared progress

Run

Requires Node 18+ and a running Postgres.

createdb coldharbor   # once
npm install
npm start

Then open http://localhost:3000. Open it in a second tab/browser to see the live multiplayer sync — refine in one and watch the other update.

By default the server connects to the local coldharbor database; in production set DATABASE_URL (e.g. a Neon or AWS RDS connection string). To reset the global goal: psql -d coldharbor -c "UPDATE bins SET refined = 0;"

Deploy (Render + Neon, free)

1. Database — create a free Postgres at neon.tech and copy its connection string.
2. Render — at dashboard.render.com choose New → Blueprint, pick this GitHub repo (it reads render.yaml), and when prompted paste the Neon string as DATABASE_URL.
3. Done — the site is live at https://<name>.onrender.com, and every push to main auto-deploys. Add a custom domain later under Settings → Custom Domains (free SSL included).

The free instance sleeps after ~15 min idle (first visit then takes ~30–60s); a free UptimeRobot monitor pinging the URL keeps it awake.

Play

• Find the cluster — hover the grid; the target numbers react. Every 15s they also act up on their own. Arrow keys pan the larger-than-screen grid.
• Refine — draw a box over the cluster, then drag the selection into a bin (or press Enter). Correct clusters fly into the box; its flaps open and close.
• Reveal (testing) — click the logo to highlight the current cluster + temper.

Tuning

server.js has the goal constants at the top (GOAL, BIN_COUNT, MAX_REFINE).