Residents
The world lives without the player and remembers the player. Residents have their own lives, roads have their own rhythm, every act has an echo. We bet on systems, not on pre-written scenes.
Every resident is a person
About 3000 named county residents. Each has a home, a job, a car, friends and enemies, habits (the bar on Fridays, church on Sundays, fishing at weekends) and a temper: brave or coward, talker or quiet, honest or bent. On top of them, a nameless crowd of tourists and people passing through.
Residents don't vanish when you look away. Far from the player they live on a schedule in the database, so when you arrive, the bartender is already behind the bar and the mechanic under a car. A killed resident does not come back: a grave with their name appears in the cemetery, and family and friends remember.
A day in the county
At 5:00 miners drive to their shift and truckers leave the motels. At 7:00 diners and gas stations open. From 9 to 17 the shops, the bank, the court, the interchange building site and the ranches work. At noon in summer it is close to 45°, and the streets empty. Evenings mean bars, the drive-in and dancing. Nights mean night shifts, drunks, bikers, smugglers and a sheriff on an empty highway. Once a month there is a fair with a rodeo.
Work is visible: the bartender washes glasses and throws out drunks, the mechanic lifts a car and actually fixes it, the mail carrier fills the boxes.
How residents react
Residents greet you or look away, notice blood, dirt, a gun in your hand and clothes out of place, refuse to serve you, call the sheriff or offer work. You can talk to anyone, greet, calm, insult, threaten or joke, and they will remember. There are 21 street interactions in all, from talking to frisking, tying up and interrogation.
Clothes speak too: in a Laughton casino work overalls get looks, in the bank a bloodied customer scares the teller, and in a biker bar a suit can end in a fight.
Traffic with a purpose
Every car has a from, a to and a why: a shift at the mine, a delivery, a tourist heading for the dam, retirees in RVs, a convoy of Cobalt's water tankers, an ambulance with a patient. In the morning traffic flows to the mines, in the evening to the bars, and on Friday there is a jam by the casinos. Drivers yield to sirens, get out to argue and write down your plate. After a crash a jam builds, and a tow truck and the sheriff arrive.
Random events
About 150 kinds of events with variants by release: a hitchhiker who may be a fugitive; a crash with injured people; an overturned cattle truck and cows on the highway; a lost tourist with no water; a crashed smugglers' plane; strange lights in the sky. About a third have a sequel: the person you saved comes to help later, the one you wronged takes revenge.
The world's memory
Witnesses, rumours, news on the Tumbleweed social network, KRUS 1340 AM "Voice of the Desert" and the weekly Route 66 Courier. Prices and people's attitudes change for weeks. Everything broken stays broken until workers fix it over game days.
Relationships and intimacy
Adults only, consent only. Affection is the memory of what you did, not a meter filled with gifts. A character can say no, and that is a normal answer; pressure closes the story. Partners have their own lives: they get hurt, leave and come back. Same-sex relationships work by the same rules.
Where to meet people: bars and the club, the diner on Route 66, the drive-in, the rodeo, channel 19 on the CB radio, the Hummingbird dating app and the Lonely Hearts column in the paper. How much is shown is the player's choice in the Intimate Scenes setting. Streamer mode hides explicit content.
Online the topic is off by default and each player turns it on. Both players confirm every step, and either can leave at any moment with one button. Harassment and selling "services" for real money get a ban. There is no sexual violence in the game in any form, and there are no children in the world.
Source: design document, sections «Living world», «Residents and daily routine», «Traffic with a purpose», «Random events», «Relationships and intimacy». The game is in development: what is described here comes from the design document and may change before release.