City Stories

A browser life-sim set in a stylized low-poly Accra, Ghana: 16 neighbourhoods from Madina and Legon down to Jamestown, Osu, Labadi and Teshie on a 160×120 tile map with the Gulf of Guinea coast and Korle Lagoon. Create a character, explore an open 3D city, walk into every building, work, eat, dance, sleep, make friends and upgrade your home. Built with Next.js, React Three Fiber and Zustand. Currency is fictional Ghana cedis (GH₵).

npm install
npm run dev    # http://localhost:3000

Controls

• Tap / click the ground to walk (A* pathfinding), or use WASD / arrows
• Tap a building to walk there and go inside; press E at any door to enter or leave
• Drag to pan, wheel or pinch to zoom, 🎯 finds your character
• The 📱 phone has Jobs, Skills, Maps, Wallet, Contacts, Messages, Calendar and Music apps
• P pauses, Esc closes panels

Life in Accra

• Getting around: walk, trotro, taxi (dropping) or order a ride; you watch your vehicle drive across the city

• Daily Sims-style tasks plus long-term life goals with cash rewards

• Places: Korle Bu Hospital, Legon University, Accra Central Police, Accra High Court, Accra Mall, Gold Coast Bank, Osu Community Church, Accra Realty, Labadi Beach, Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, Jamestown Lighthouse and a land plot

• Hustles (pure water, second-hand clothes, phone repairs, fish porter, tour guide) and crime (pickpocketing, alley robbery) with arrest, custody, court pleas and prison

• Sickness (malaria, flu, food poisoning, injuries), NHIS, pharmacy and hospital stays

• University degrees that raise pay in matching careers

• Dating, engagement ring, proposal, wedding and spouse household support

• Buy land and build a house in stages, buy homes outright, home upgrades (AC, paint, generator for dumsor, mosquito nets)

• Phone: WhatsApp-style chats and a group chat, MoMo transfers with E-levy, a bank account with interest, T-bills and Ghana Stock Exchange shares

• Land: six plots that appreciate daily; buy, sell, permits (or a risky “facilitation fee”), land guards (pay, bribe police, report, fight), demolition risk without a permit

• Police: bribe at arrest or at checkpoints; it can backfire

• Driving jobs: okada (no licence), ride-hailing and trotro (DVLA licence). Buy at Spintex Motors or rent daily, then drive 6-trip shifts from the Drive app

Performance & multiplayer readiness

• Ground, fillers, trees, lamps and road markings are instanced; far destination buildings collapse to one block
• Pedestrians and traffic recycle around the camera; traffic only ever travels on road tiles
• Labels are culled by distance; resolution drops automatically when frames slow down
• src/game/net/: NetAdapter interface, OfflineAdapter (default) and RealtimeAdapter shaped for Ably presence. Remote players are interpolated (150 ms buffer), capped to the 24 nearest and drawn with lightweight characters. Presence is published at most 5×/second and only when moving
• When going online, keep money, inventory, purchases, property and rewards on a server; presence data is display-only

Architecture

• src/game/config.ts: city name, currency and every balancing value
• src/game/content.ts: typed careers, destinations, furniture, homes, activities, NPCs, events
• src/game/world.ts: tile map, collision, A*
• src/game/store.ts, activities.ts, home.ts: simulation, fully separate from rendering
• src/game/life.ts: daily tasks, life goals, weekdays, ride fares
• src/game/save.ts: versioned, validated local saves with corrupt-save backup
• src/components/three/*: R3F world, home interior, walk-in building interiors, characters, traffic, day/night, projected labels
• src/components/Phone.tsx: iPhone-style phone UI

Multiplayer is intentionally out of scope. When added, currency, purchases, inventory and rewards must be server-authoritative; the activity resolver in activities.ts is the natural place to move behind an API.