A local-first Civic Gothic browser game
Earn your place.Mend a town.Outwit the Register.
You are Silas Wren, a fugitive clerk with no lawful name. Work for shelter, make what the valley needs, and decide what a perfect record should leave blank.
- First chapter
- 25–35 min
- Town
- 6 lived-in places
- Your save
- Local & sealed
What you actually do
Work is how the story moves.
Every promise becomes a practical problem. Find the right place, meet the person who knows what matters, gather what is missing, and make something the town can use.
- ExploreFollow six connected places
The Common, Smithy, Physic Garden, Stillroom, Reeve’s Hall, and North Bridge each hold distinct work and people.
- MakeTurn materials into answers
Carry coal, forge nails, gather yarrow, brew tonic, repair a bridge, and draft the Crown’s own forms.
- ObserveFind people on their own time
Residents work, rest, cross the Common, and keep schedules that continue whether or not you are watching.
- ReturnLet the valley move while you are gone
Come back to bounded offline progress, a sealed save, and a Chronicle that tells you what changed.
One chapter · four promises
Small work. Human stakes. No chosen-one errands.
“A town the Crown cannot see still has bridges to mend.”Hester Vane, reeve of Blankvale
Kept promise 01
Six Nails for Shelter
Mara Venn · Blacksmith
Carry coal, forge your first six nails, and earn a dry loft without ever placing your name in the Crown’s book.
Coal → iron nails → a place to sleep
Kept promise 02
A Fever Without a Name
Sabine Holt · Herbalist
Gather yarrow and willow bark for a child the registered dispensary is not allowed to admit exists.
Yarrow + bark → fever tonic
Kept promise 03
The North Bridge
Hester Vane · Reeve
Build the town’s iron supply, repair the road before the rain, and discover who is crossing at dawn.
12 nails → a road that holds
Kept promise 04
A Blank Return
Captain Lucan Marr · Writwarden
Face the colleague you fled and draft a perfect official return with every household line deliberately empty.
Penmanship → three borrowed days
A town, not a quest board
People remember what you keep.
Mara wants roofs that hold. Sabine treats every body that needs care. Hester protects an illegal town with meticulous unofficial records. Lucan knows the Register harms people and still fears what happens without it.
Their motives conflict. Their routines continue. Your standing changes when you meet an obligation, not when you click through flattery.
Meet the people and the Great RegisterLocal-first by design
Close the tab. The valley will still be yours.
Blankvale needs no account and has no cloud-save dependency. Your current and previous worlds are sealed in browser storage. Export a passphrase-protected archive when you want a portable backup.
Read exactly how saves and privacy work- Play
- In a modern browser, with full keyboard access
- Return
- Offline after installation, with bounded settlement
- Keep
- Two sealed local save generations
- Carry
- A passphrase-protected encrypted archive
Before you enter
Questions from beyond the valley
What kind of game is Blankvale?
Blankvale is a single-player narrative life-simulation browser game. You move through a small town, take on work, gather and craft useful items, follow resident routines, and complete a connected four-part story about trust and civic obligation.
How long is the first Blankvale chapter?
A clean first play is designed to take roughly 25–35 minutes. After the soft conclusion, the town remains playable: work, conversations, resident schedules, offline settlement, encrypted archives, and town portraits continue.
Do I need an account or download?
No account is required. Blankvale runs in a modern browser and can be installed as a progressive web app for offline return visits. Your world is stored locally in your browser rather than in a Blankvale account.
Does the game send my save to a server?
No. Your world is sealed and stored in this browser. You can create a passphrase-protected archive when you want a portable backup, but Blankvale does not upload your save to a cloud-save service.