Nation of One is a free 4X strategy game that runs in your browser. There is nothing to download and nothing to install. It needs JavaScript, so please enable it and reload this page to play.
You arrive alone in a procedurally generated world of hexes and find it already populated. You explore it, you fight what lives there, and gradually you impose your will on it. The game is meant to feel like the early part of a 4X game, the exploring and the expanding, without the city management that usually comes with the genre.
Fights are resolved by card placement. The cards in your hand come from the equipment you are carrying, so changing your kit changes how you fight. Both sides draw a hand and choose a card each round, and the effects resolve at the same time: damage, blocks, status effects that shut off whole card types, and magic such as healing, retreat and prescience.
Defeating a powerful enemy spreads word to nearby settlements and raises your reputation. As it climbs, people gift you better equipment and eventually trust you enough to follow you and found a settlement somewhere new. Settlements built next to each other form a nation, and a growing nation develops culturally, unlocking assets and benefits you cannot get any other way.
Twelve gods with jealous and fickle personalities watch what you do. The more successful you become the more jealous they get, and every so often one of them sends an enemy to test you. The world has its own moods too: volcanoes erupt, earthquakes level buildings, and the sea floods low coastal ground.
Nation of One is free, single player, and saves to your own browser. Once loaded it keeps working offline. It is also published on itch.io.