--- title: "Amarna Letters" url: "https://aigamehub.app/en/games/amarna-letters-c4c85e" source: "https://github.com/HaakTuah/amarna-letters" source_type: "github" play_url: "https://haaktuah.github.io/amarna-letters/" platform: "both" login_required: false pricing: "free" origin: "original" ai_tools: ["Claude"] game_languages: ["en"] author: "HaakTuah" author_handle: "HaakTuah" category: "Simulation" categories: ["simulation", "text-ai"] tags: ["bronze-age", "browser-game", "diplomacy", "llm-agents", "multi-agent", "strategy"] added: "2026-11-06T06:09:56.350Z" updated: "2026-11-06T06:09:56.351Z" locale: "en" content_locale: "en" --- # Amarna Letters A browser strategy game set among the seven Great Kings of the Late Bronze Age and the city-states between them, where no diplomacy rules are imposed: every treaty, alliance and betrayal is invented by the players, and every message travels through an envoy who may soften it, sell it or lie about it. ## Description Amarna Letters is a turn-based strategy prototype set around 1360-1330 BCE. The player takes one of forty-seven powers, the seven Great Kings or the city-states and chiefs between them, and is scored on the size and growth of the realm relative to powers that started in a comparable position. Each season the player reads what reached the court, receives foreign envoys, and issues secret orders, after which all kings' orders resolve simultaneously. The engine handles movement, combat, production, harvest taxation, troop pay and supply, and mutinies; diplomacy itself has no rule set, so treaties and betrayals are invented by the participants. Kings never speak directly: messages pass through envoys with their own motives, and each message exists in three versions, what the king wrote, what the envoy said abroad, and what the envoy reported home. Players may play a king themselves, let Claude play all the kings, or mix the two; without an API key every king and envoy is a scripted player. The project is built as a C# engine running in Blazor WebAssembly and is described as running in the browser on desktop and phone. ## Original post A strategy game of the seven Great Kings of the Late Bronze Age with no diplomacy rules: every treaty and betrayal is yours, and every word travels with an envoy who may soften it, sell it or lie. Play the kings yourself, watch Claude play them, or mix the two. Runs in the browser on desktop and phone; C# engine, Blazor WebAssembly. Topics: ancient-history, anthropic, blazor-webassembly, bronze-age, browser-game, claude, csharp, diplomacy, dotnet, game-ai, llm, multi-agent, strategy-game, webassembly # Amarna Letters A strategy game with no diplomacy rules, set among the seven Great Kings of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1360–1330 BCE) and the city-states between them. The engine enforces physics: movement, combat, production and payment. Every treaty, alliance and betrayal is invented by the players. Kings never speak to each other directly: every word travels with an envoy who has motives of their own. This is the prototype described in the design document *Amarna Letters — Prototype Design Document*. Its job is to test one hypothesis: if communication is delayed, mediated by people with their own motives, and impossible to verify fully, then norms of trust, reputation and enforcement emerge on their own. **Play it in your browser:** Play a king or a city yourself, watch Claude play them all, or mix the two. With no API key, every king and envoy is a script player, and a whole game costs nothing. ![The message trail: what Alashiya's king wrote, beside what his envoy said abroad and reported home](docs/archive/rounds/2026-10-19-visual-overhaul/desktop-dark-trail.jpg) *The message trail. Every message exists in three versions: what the king wrote, what the envoy said at the foreign court, and what the envoy reported home. The gaps between them are the game.* ## How to play You are one of forty-seven powers: the seven Great Kings, Egypt, Hatti, Babylonia, Mitanni, Assyria, Arzawa and Alashiya, or one of the forty city-states and chiefs between them, Byblos, Amurru, Ugarit and the rest, on one scoreboard: each power is judged by its size and by its growth against what powers that started where it did have achieved, so a city that holds its own can win as well as an empire. Each season you read what reached your court, receive foreign envoys, and give your orders in secret. Every king orders at the same time, and the engine resolves everything at once. Three seasons make a year. You see only what your kingdom can see: your own land, the provinces where your troops stand or your spies watch, and one step beyond them. Everything else you know from letters, reports and rumours, and those can be late, shaded or false. ### A season 1. **The land and its upkeep.** In its season the harvest is reaped and taxed into each province's stores; mines and markets bring in gold; people eat, and the hungry move. Troops are paid from your treasury and fed from your stores by your standing order (every king starts with one, and may hold back pay or food from all his troops or from one province's; nothing is paid or fed without it), works are kept as you ordered, and troops left unpaid or hungry for long mutiny. 2. **Arrivals.** Envoys, gold, spy reports and rumours that were on the road arrive. 3. **Audiences.** Foreign envoys deliver their message in their own words. The host answers, and may bribe the envoy, offer it a post, seal its tablet, detain it or send gold back. Each audience has up to two exchanges, and the envoy