Synapse

SYNAPSE — Chronicles of Chaos is an uchronic card roguelike where you play a Temporal Architect tasked with guiding humanity through six eras without letting the Chaos win.

Each turn, three cards are offered. Only one will be played. Each one writes a fragment of History — or undoes it.

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The Butterfly Effect

SYNAPSE is solo, but you are not alone. Your choices resonate with those of other Architects from the past few days: the World Tension and tag multipliers shift in real time based on what the community plays. A "War" card that was neutral yesterday can become devastating today if too many players have walked that path.

You can either follow the meta — or fight it.

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The Six Eras

Antiquity → Middle Ages → Renaissance → Industrial → Modern → Future

Each era has a major tag (Religion, Technology or Social). Reaching 200 progress is not enough — 40 % of your plays must carry that tag. Hit 200 without the quota? You are stuck at 199 until you find the right cards.

Some eras are merciless: in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the major tag is Religion — a negative tag that doubles Stability loss when you chain two of them. How do you fulfill the quota without collapsing?

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Four resources, a thousand combinations

• Stability — the lifeline of your era. Hit zero, and Chaos rises.
• Progress — 200 points to advance to the next era (plus the major-tag quota).
• Chaos — reaches 100? Catastrophic Uchronia, game over.
• World Tension — the collective pulse of all Architects.

Four tags: Technology, Social, War, Religion. Two stackable resonances: chaining two cards of the same positive tag grants +50 % Progress; two of the same negative tag doubles your Stability loss.

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Features

• 6 traversable eras, ~250 unique historical cards
• Resonances between tags that amplify (or punish) your choices
• Butterfly Effect recomputed in real time via the backend
• Historical event cards (Black Plague, Tambora eruption, Krakatoa, Solar Storm…) that can surge between two of your turns
• Era transitions with cinematic music between each chapter
• Global leaderboard: mastered uchronias enter the shared Archives

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⚠ Beta — Audio coverage

This is an open beta. Gameplay and balancing are still evolving. Your runs directly feed the meta seen by other Architects — every card you play counts.

Important: in this beta, the per-card audio (hover ambient + click stinger) is currently only available for the Antiquity era. Cards from later eras (Middle Ages, Renaissance, Industrial, Modern, Future) will play silent until their audio is generated. Era-transition music and global background music work for the entire game.

Bug? Idea? Feedback? I'm listening.

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Under the hood

• Frontend: Vue 3 + TypeScript + Vite
• Backend: Laravel 12 + PostgreSQL
• Audio generated via ElevenLabs SFX, encoded in .ogg vorbis
• Illustrations generated + hand-retouched, steampunk style (amber parchments, brass accents)

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Recommended

• Screen ≥ 1280×800
• Headphones or speakers to enjoy the audio (Antiquity era only in beta)
• A bit of patience for the initial catalog load