A small jerboa in goggles and a red scarf stands on a burned-out car, watching the sun go down over a desert of wrecks.

Animal Wasteland

250 years after the Great Wars… it’s actually pretty cute out here.

The situation

You owe a badger 411,000 aluminium

His name is Brux. He is a honey badger, he wears a crown he made himself, and he stands at the gate all day watching you work.

You pay him back by scavenging, fishing, farming and selling. Nobody is coming to help, although six of them live here, one of whom is an owl who keeps appalling hours.

Walk east far enough and the sand goes under water. No door, no loading screen. The Drowned Verge starts about where you stop trusting the ground.

A dust storm over the camp: the light goes flat and orange, visibility closes in, and the villagers head for the lee of the shack. — Dust storm. Everyone gives up and heads for the shack.

The restored floodgate, water running through the channel, machinery turning. — The Floodgate, running again after a long errand.

The Drowned Exchange: concrete ruins and a bus wreck standing in shallow green water. — The Drowned Exchange. Somebody shopped here once.

The camp at night under a blue moonlit sky, lanterns burning. — Camp at night. Only the owl is up.

The shape of a day

Everyone keeps hours

Poppy gardens in the cool part of the day and hides at noon. Gilly fishes at dawn and dusk. The professor is an owl and sleeps through all of it.

Turn up and help

Catch someone mid-task and you can lend a hand — once a day, only while they’re actually doing it. Miss the window and it’s gone until tomorrow.

They tell you things

Get close enough to somebody and they stop being a shopkeeper. Everyone is carrying one thing they haven’t said out loud yet.

The sky is weather, not a filter

Storms dim the sun, close the fog in and put grit in the air. You will lose an afternoon to one, which is rather the idea.

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