DysEpoch is an adventure game where players experience biblical and world history instead of being taught it. This proof-of-concept entry, “David & Goliath: Valley of Elah,” puts you in the sandals of an Israelite soldier stationed on the battle line on the day David faced Goliath.
What you do:
- Enter the era — arrive at the Valley of Elah as the two armies face off, and receive your mission: discover what courage means when everyone around you is afraid.
- Explore — move through the Israelite camp across nine scenes: the cookfire, the supply tent, the quiet brook. Six codex discoveries wait for those who look, each with its Scripture citation, so what the Bible records is always distinguished from the camp’s own voice.
- Talk — converse with the soldiers beside you through dialogue written for this world.
- Choose — make decisions that change the soldier’s morale (his bearing visibly steadies when you encourage the line) — but never rewrite the outcome. That boundary is the whole design.
- Witness — see David face Goliath exactly as Scripture records, at a reverent distance. Seen, never staged by you.
- Reflect — answer the reflection question and keep what the experience taught you in your codex.
How it’s built: vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — no build step, no dependencies, no npm packages. The story loads from a data file, so it runs via a local web server (python3 -m http.server, instructions in README). Scripted dialogue throughout, so judges experience everything with no API keys. Automated checks in tests/ cover the story paths.
To play: clone or download the repo, run python3 -m http.server 8000 in the folder, open http://localhost:8000 in a browser (instructions in README).
Built with: Claude Code. Character and scene artwork is intentionally not included in this repository — it uses placeholder panels until the artwork’s publication rights are verified.
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