SCRAPLAND
The automation wave isn't coming.
It's here.
A retro EGA RPG set during the displacement. Load your family onto a flatbed, drive 1,100 miles east through Paladin-occupied America, and build a scrap-bot army from everything the machines left behind.
TEN STOPS.
1,100 MILES.
PALADIN AT EVERY ONE.
Adam Wright lost his trade to automation. Then his whole town lost the mill — and Paladin Civic Systems rolled in with a contract nobody read.
So the Wrights load the truck and drive east, chasing a rumor of somewhere the machines haven't reached yet. It's a long way. Paladin is already ahead of them at every stop.
This is the road. Keep your family fed, keep the truck running, and decide who you help and who you leave behind — because the country you're crossing is coming apart in real time.
The travel loop, Oregon Trail-style: drive on, make camp, keep everyone moving. Every mile costs fuel and food, and the road has plans of its own.
Salvage the wreck of a Paladin unit, rebuild it into something of your own, and send it into the next fight. Your army is only as good as the junk you can find.
BUILD YOUR ARMY FROM
WHAT AUTOMATION
LEFT BEHIND.
Adam's been tinkering in the garage for twenty years, and now the whole country is a junkyard. Mill parts. Dead vending machines. Broken-down Paladin hardware. Every dumpster holds something that used to be somebody's living — and a fighter waiting to be built.
Every bot is a piece of the world that fell apart — put back together with purpose.
GOLD BOX FACE.
FIGHT SMART,
OR DON'T FIGHT AT ALL.
Run into a Paladin patrol and the battle screen takes over — classic turn-based, Gold Box-style, your scrap bots against corporate hardware that was built to sort people, not fight them.
Read the machines. Find the opening. Every enemy has a weakness if you know where to look — and every fight is one you can walk away from. Stealth is always on the table. Nothing here forces your hand.
Chunky EGA sprites, damage numbers, sparks on the crits, and a screen that shakes when you take a hit. Turn-based combat with real teeth.
Line up the crosshair, take your shot, and race the clock. Bring the dog — he earns his keep.
YOU CAN SHOOT MORE
THAN YOU CAN CARRY.
Oregon Trail hunting, rebuilt for the EGA road. The game brings the food along the way, and every animal moves differently — so line up the crosshair and make the shot count.
But there's only so much you can haul home, so choose your shots. And hunt too close to a Paladin town, and you'll draw the kind of attention you can't outrun.
QUIET. NO AMMO.
NO HEAT.
THE RIVER RUNS STILL.
The counterpoint to hunting. No ammo, no noise, no drones overhead — just you, the river, and a few casts to bring something home.
There aren't many quiet moments on this road. This is one of them. Take it while you can.
Cast, wait, and catch what the river gives you — one of the few places on this road where the world goes quiet.
Take day-work to keep the family fed on the road — and, if you make it far enough, work land of your own.
SOMEWHERE TO STOP
RUNNING.
The road doesn't have to be forever. Along the way there's honest day-work to keep everyone fed — and, if you make it far enough, a patch of ground you can actually call your own.
Plant it. Tend it. Weather what the seasons throw at you. Building something that lasts is the whole point of the drive. Holding onto it is another story.
PALADIN SORTS PEOPLE.
THE CARAVAN
REFUSES.
Everyone who rides with you brings the work automation took from them. Not a character class. Not a skill tree. A real history, turned into something useful when it counts.
No XP. No grinding. People get stronger the way real people do — through what they've survived and who they've come to trust. The tighter the caravan holds together, the harder it is to break.
It starts with a family in a truck. Who else ends up in it — and who they turn out to be — is the road's to decide.
Camp scenes at night are short player-selectable conversations — the only space in the game where the family exists without a problem pressing on them. The arc lives here.
EGA 16-COLOR.
640×400 VIRTUAL RESOLUTION.
PHOSPHOR GREEN ON NEAR-BLACK.
