Sortis
Show HN: Pen and paper resource development game with an emergent world
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What is Sortis?
Sortis is a solo pen-and-paper empire-building game that tries to create the feel of a procedural strategy game without asking the player to do constant turn-by-turn bookkeeping. You play it in a notebook, using only pen and paper, and the core appeal is that it mixes progression, automation, and discovery while keeping the manual computation manageable. The world is a 256-by-256 grid generated from two byte-sized seeds, with terrain and ore tiers derived from a simple XOR/LFSR system. The author frames it as a game for players who want something engaging to do while tired, and for people with enough computer-science familiarity to recognize ideas like XOR and hexadecimal.
Sortis pricing
Pricing model: Freemium
The website does not present any paid plans, subscriptions, or in-app pricing because Sortis is described as a paper game played with pen and paper in a notebook. The article presents the game itself as something you can do with ordinary stationery, and it includes the rules and cheat sheet freely on the page. No separate free tier or premium tier is mentioned.
Sortis pros
- Pure pen-and-paper play
- Solo notebook experience
- Procedurally generated world
- 256-by-256 map
- No dice required
- No calculator required
- Simple remembered primitives
- Emergent world behavior
- Terrain has natural clustering
- Ore tiers are embedded in the map
- Seeds only choose starting position
- Closed-form turn skipping
- No need to simulate every turn
- Supports long-term progression
- Automation feel without software
- Clear building progression
- Multiple resource layers
- Map generation speeds up after practice
- Append-only logs reduce bookkeeping
- One-player control over all agents
Sortis cons
- Requires comfort with hexadecimal
- Requires comfort with XOR
- LFSR rule may feel technical
- Map generation is hand-calculated
- Large world is impractical to fully explore
- Bookkeeping still involves multiple logs
- Late-game planning is complex
- Bridges are extremely expensive
- High-level smelting chains are costly
- Some mechanics are initially unintuitive
- Agents and transport add coordination overhead
- The game is not pick-up-and-play for everyone
- Level 6 and beyond require heavy skipping
- Ore tier limits constrain early progression
- Late game may be unreachable in normal play
Frequently asked questions about Sortis
What is Sortis?
Sortis is a solo paper empire game played in a notebook. It aims to recreate the sense of a procedural strategy game, including progression, automation, and discovery, while keeping everything doable by hand with pen and paper.
How do you generate the world?
You choose two byte-sized seeds, one for X and one for Y, and step them with an LFSR-style rule. Each square is the XOR of the corresponding X and Y values, and that value determines whether the square is water, forest, or mountain.
What kind of terrain can appear?
The map uses three terrain types: water, forest, and mountain. The cutoffs are based on the generated byte value, with mountains also carrying ore tiers determined by the number of trailing zeros in the value.
What is the goal of the game?
The main goal is to raise the workshop to the highest level possible. To do that, you gather wood and ore, expand your setup, and chain higher-grade production through smelting and better infrastructure.
How many players does Sortis support?
It is described as a single-player game. You control every agent in the notebook world yourself.
What do you need to play?
You need only pen, paper, and a notebook-style setup. The rules are designed so that no dice or calculator are required, though the author notes that familiarity with hexadecimal and XOR makes the game easier to learn.
How do buildings work?
Buildings have levels, and each type has a specific role in progression. The main building types are house, workshop, extractor, smelter, and road segment, plus wagon and boat as vehicles.
How does resource production work?
Extractors produce resources each turn when an agent is assigned to them and physically present. Smelters convert lower-grade ore into higher-grade ore using ore and wood, which lets you move beyond the natural ore limits on the map.
Why does the game use skipping ahead in turns?
The game is built around the idea that you do not manually simulate every single turn. Instead, you use closed-form tracking and logs so you can jump forward until the next meaningful change, which matches the game’s automation theme.
How do you keep track of everything?
The article recommends using a terrain map, a separate buildings map, an agent log, and a turn log. These records let you follow long cycles, resource accumulation, and travel without simulating each turn one by one.