Welcome to SWORD & HAMMER, a Multiplayer Adventure Realm! Become an adventurer in a brutal world full of fantastic creatures, magic, and growing evil. Work together to defeat greater enemies and unlock deeper secrets. Just remember, if survival was guaranteed (or at all likely), it wouldn’t be an adventure!
New? Play side-by-side with the Tutorial.
On any page, click the logo above and enter your name to play.
S&H is a text based game where the world is expressed with both a visual map grid and descriptive text. If you have played a rogue- or MUD-like game, you will find familiar elements.
Explore the world, kill monsters, gain XP!
Back in the 90s, I spent a lot of time playing MUDs; a SMAUG-based one called Mignight Sanctuary in particular. I was also learning C and had the (obvious?) idea to build a similar game using NCURSES text graphics instead of scrolling text. I knew nothing about Nethack and such at the time, but the look of my map was similar, though more colorful. Nothing playable was achieved back then, but the seed was planted. Nearly 30 years later I revisited the idea, and SWORD & HAMMER is born!
Technology has evolved since the 90s, so S&H looks different from its earlier prototype. The web client you see above has a lower barrier to entry; it should work on any PC with a javascript-enabled web browser. The server application is written in Go (using only the standard library!) and is hosted in a cloud instance running FreeBSD. Every aspect of the game, including this website, is written/edited in VIM as I've done all these years.
SWORD & HAMMER's look and feel is based on the original IBM VGA introduced in 1987; VGA-capable computers were widespread in the 90s. Like many other MUDs and roguelikes, S&H draws from a well known RPGs and fantasy settings popular in the 80s and 90s.