Behind the Game

About

One person, a few evenings, and a love for classic RTS games.

Meet the Human in the Loop

Adam Sturrock

Shards of Stone is a love letter to the classic RTS games I grew up playing, Warcraft III and Age of Empires above all. The kind of games that don't really get made any more. I wanted to see if one person with modern tools could change that.

It is an independent game. It runs on a custom engine written from scratch in TypeScript.

Y Combinator alumnus. Previously co-founded Moltin, which exited in 2019.

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How It's Grown

March 2026
Started as a two-week experiment: could a classic fantasy RTS run in a browser? Dwarves vs Goblins.
April 2026
Heroes joined the armies, and the game moved from flat 2D sprites to full 3D.
June 2026
Loot, item shops and a dungeon crawler for your heroes.
August 2026
Online battles for up to 8 players in teams, a map editor, and new ways to win.
September 2026
Custom games in The Forge, the Shards of Fate card game, and a MOBA.
Now
Nine factions, two campaigns, up to 8-player online, custom games, and three more games in the same world.
Next
Making the first 30 minutes great, and letting what you earn in one game count in the others.

How It's Made

~20 min

Per Session

An evening here and there

7 Months

So Far

And counting

One person, in short evenings, working with AI tools.

Claude, Codex and Gemini write the code. Gemini and Meshy make the art and 3D models, Suno writes the music and ElevenLabs voices the characters. Adam decides what goes in.

Curious how it's built? Read the dev blog.

It's early.

Some animations are rough and some modes are newer than others. What you play today is a work in progress, and it changes every week.