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What Is Asciilands?
Asciilands is a towny multiplayer sandbox where one huge world is drawn in ASCII text. Survive, gather, explore and build alongside other players. Chop trees, mine ore, fish the shallows, smelt ingots and forge custom gear. Found a town, claim land and grow it into a nation.
How to Play Asciilands Online
Enter The World
- Open Asciilands in your browser and pick a server on the title screen:
- Europe, North America or Asia Pacific.
- Each server has its own world.
- Start as guest or use Discord.
Survive And Gather
- Use WASD to move, Shift to run, and the mouse to look and click to act.
- Chop trees, mine ore, fish the shallows and harvest rare plants.
- Press Tab to open your pack.
Craft And Forge
- Smelt your ores into ingots at the furnace, then hammer fully custom gear and weapons at the anvil.
- The Horizon Update adds Jadesteel gear and rare deposits.
Build Town And Trade
- Build anything from a camp to a house, a town, a city or a nation.
- Claim land and add town upgrades, piers and dockyards.
- Then sail rafts and dhows to new continents.
Why Play Asciilands Online?
A Whole World In Text
Every tree, coastline and ore vein is drawn with ASCII characters, so the world reads like a living terminal picture. It hides secrets and rare deposits worth sailing to.
One Shared World
Everyone shares the same massive world, and what you build stays for others to find. Guest progress saves too, and Discord sign-in carries your character across every device.
Real Crafting Depth
Wood, ore and rare plants feed a crafting chain far past collecting. Smelt ores into ingots and hammer custom weapons at the anvil, so every loadout feels like your own.
Towns And Trade
Most sandboxes stop at the solo camp. Asciilands keeps going: found a town, claim land, add upgrades and dockyards, grow it into a nation, then sail out and trade.
Asciilands Tips And Tricks
Read The Winds Before You Sail
Sailing is the centerpiece of the Horizon Update, and the wind shifts as you move. Check the wind indicator before a long stretch of open water, and learn how each direction pushes your raft, dhow or cog so you can plan your route.
Check the wind before every departure and keep a dock close to turn back.
Claim Land And Build Up
A camp protects you for a while, but a town is what makes Asciilands worth playing. Found one as soon as you have the materials, claim the land around it, then add town upgrades so your settlement can grow into a city.
Found your town before you scatter resources across distant mining nodes.
Smelt Over Gathering More
Raw ore is only half the crafting chain. Smelt into ingots early so mining and smelting run in parallel, then hammer custom gear at the anvil. That turns a long gathering trip into real power for far less effort.
Smelt in bulk while you travel and visit the anvil whenever ingots run out.
Use Tab And The Debug Menu
Tab opens your pack, the fastest way to check materials, tools and food before a long trip, and it holds your gear loadout. Settings also has the Debug menu, which collects technical details if you need to report a bug.
Open your pack before heading out, and grab a Debug report if something breaks.
If you enjoy Asciilands and want another free browser game that loads instantly, Scritchy Scratchy is a great next stop. It is the home of this browser game, and Scritchy Scratchy adds a whole new cartoon action challenge right alongside it. Like Asciilands, it needs no downloads.
Asciilands Frequently Asked Questions
Asciilands is completely free to play, with optional donations to help keep the servers up. Discord sign-in lets you continue progress across devices and use friends, parties and towns. A Discord account is not required to start playing.
Any modern browser works, on a computer, phone or tablet. Phones and tablets get touch controls, while a desktop browser with keyboard and mouse suits building, mining and forging best. A Steam version is planned for full release.
There are three regions: Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. You pick your server on the title screen, and each server runs its own world and characters, so progress never carries between servers.
Progress saves for both guest accounts and Discord logins, and the world itself stays persistent. Wipes may happen eventually, but unless truly necessary they would probably only affect builds and the world rather than your items.
Post your report in the bug-reports channel on the Asciilands Discord and include as much detail as you can. Check the Debug menu in Settings first, since it collects technical information that speeds up fixes.
Share your ideas in the suggestions channel on the Discord and explain what you want to do and why. Asciilands is in active development, so feature requests are read directly by the developer and shape upcoming patches.
You can play fully solo and still explore, gather, craft and build a camp alone. Towns, nations, parties and face-to-face trade only make sense with others around, and the world fills with player builds as it grows.
It adds sailing rafts, dhows and cogs, readable winds, piers and town dockyards, new continents and sea islands, Jadesteel gear, regional foods and crops, rare deposits, a lawless jungle isle, face-to-face trade, town upgrades and mobile support.
Mine and harvest your materials, smelt ores into ingots at the furnace, then bring ingots to the anvil to hammer custom gear and weapons. Jadesteel and rare deposits from far islands unlock stronger tiers.
Once your camp is established, find or found a town and claim the land around it. Add town upgrades, buildings, piers and dockyards, and your settlement can develop from town into city and finally into a nation.
Asciilands is never pay to play and all support is voluntary. Donations go first to server hosting, then to commissioned art and music, as transparently as possible. Supporters already paid for the first commissioned art and music.
Yes. Asciilands supports touch controls on phones and tablets, and mobile support is part of the Horizon Update. Desktop browsers with keyboard and mouse remain best for smooth building, mining and crafting.
Asciilands Features Worth Exploring
A World Drawn In ASCII
The whole game renders as ASCII text, so forests, coasts, deserts and mountains read like a living terminal drawing. It is instantly readable, surprisingly atmospheric, and unlike any voxel survival sandbox on the market today.
Gather, Smelt And Forge
Chop trees, mine ore, fish the shallows and harvest rare plants, then turn raw materials into ingots, tools and gear. The anvil lets you hammer custom weapons and equipment instead of a fixed crafting tree.
Sail The Horizon Seas
The Horizon Update adds rafts, dhows and cogs, winds you can learn to read, piers and town dockyards, plus new continents and sea islands. Building a dock and loading cargo turns exploration into a real journey.