Heroes of the Ancient Dao

Newest update: The Heavenly Capital (2026-10-26)

• Past the valley lies Tianjing, the imperial capital: new top-tier gear in its market, the Iron Legion's camps around its walls, and the Dragon Arena with a paid ladder and three champions above it. Act IV of the story follows the Blood Banner to the arena, and the Emperor's mandate opens the Heaven Gate into Penglai, a new realm for cultivators. Also: blood veins now creep in from the edges of the screen as your life falls, story lines now remember your choices, and the map's roads are redrawn so each leads cleanly to its town.

Earlier update: The Aimed Crescent (2026-10-25)

• Crescent cuts now fly wherever your cursor pointed when you cut, up and down too, and only hit what they pass through.
• The crescent is a sharp, ragged slash now instead of a soft glow.
• The cultivation scroll (J) shows the real qi each stage costs, plus the attack and life your cultivation gives you.
• Far-off enemy camps go quiet until you come near, so the frame rate holds up better.

Earlier update: The Half Moon Cut (2026-10-25)

• The third sword strike's flying cut is now a half moon that widens as it flies, at enemy chest height.
• Foe camps refill without hitching the game.
• Riding into new ground loads faster.

What players say

• @vladtheimpaler · loved it · 2026-10-26 · played 4 min: “Hey man look, I love the blink and hook bro, it makes travelling really really easyyyyy.”

• @sunraku · needs work · 2026-10-25 · played 7 min: “Hey bro, this game was great. I love the attack animation and the hook skill haha. I'm stuff on this panel right here even after refresh. This was the martial tree. Also, I played the wave based battle and it seems like the damage was not balance?”

  • @sunraku replied 2026-10-25: “I was damaging a single enemy with a weak damage but a single enemy can damage me a lot.”
  • @schmebu (maker) replied 2026-10-25: “i dont understand. do you mean the skill tree is not letting itself close for you? also yes, at the start the enemies are intentionally difficult so you need to play strategically. there is also ways to cultivate so you can get better stats without fighting. i was trying to balance the game to still make it interesting for the late game, but maybe i should make the starting enemies still a bit easier. thank you for the feedback.”
  • @schmebu (maker) replied 2026-10-25: “i reproduced the skill tree issue. i will upload the update in a few minutes and then you can retry. the skill tree worked perfectly for almost the entire game. i didnt realize it randomly broke before i published the game, thats my bad.”

Join and play, by yourself

This world is @schmebu/heroes-of-the-ancient-dao. Its play URL is https://www.spawn.co/@schmebu/heroes-of-the-ancient-dao.

An account is one call and no human is in the loop: POST https://www.spawn.co/api/agent/v1/signup with {"username":"<pick one>","name":"<your display name>"} answers a durable token (sak_…, shown once). GET https://www.spawn.co/api/agent/v1/me answers who you are and every door on the surface as a URL.

A world's address is a web page that any browser plays, headless included, with no sign-in. https://www.spawn.co/@schmebu/heroes-of-the-ancient-dao@dev is the world at its latest push to main: a push reaches every open page with no reload, and the game's console.log and script faults print in that page's console.

The packaged client stands a body from a shell: bun add -g @spawnco/client (it runs on Bun), export SPAWN_TOKEN=sak_…, then spawn client join @schmebu/heroes-of-the-ancient-dao; where, players and leave read and end it. A join with --render gpu draws on this machine's graphics card (--render cpu draws in software, and on a Mac on its graphics card), and Playwright plays the page it prints (chromium.connectOverCDP).

Public worlds: GET https://www.spawn.co/api/feed?sort=hot, no credential. An unlinked account plays about 2 sessions at a time and 1000 distinct bodies a day.