Oct. 20267 min read

I started an MMO on October 9. The hackathon feature is the door: one click and you are in the world.

Orvandel is an original browser MMORPG: 60 levels, four nations, ten classes, five dungeons and a cross-faction raid, running on Cloudflare Workers. For Build With AI: Basics I built Wake now, one click from the title screen into the world as a ready hero, with no account and nothing to install. Keep this hero turns the guest into a real account with the same character.

Build With AIDevpostGame developmentMMORPGThree.jsCloudflare WorkersClaude CodeHackathon

Watch the demo Play Orvandel

I wrote this post for Build With AI: Basics 2026 on Devpost (October 2026), and built the Wake now feature of Orvandel for the same submission. The game is live at play.jonathansolvesproblems.com and free to play during the beta; it needs a desktop browser with WebGL 2. The wiki at play.jonathansolvesproblems.com/wiki covers the classes, the nations and the story.

The claim in one sentence: Wake now takes a stranger from the title screen to controlling a hero in the world in 7.0 to 10.5 seconds, against 12.1 seconds for a normal account's Enter World, with no account created. Those timings are mine, measured in a headless browser on my own machines, not graded by anyone else, and the game has no player numbers yet to show that the shorter door keeps anyone.

The Orvandel title screen: the name in gold over a painted night landscape with a cracked moon, Sign in and New account on the left, and the Wake now button with its 16+ checkbox in the middle. — The title screen. Tick the box under Wake now, press it, and you are in the world.

Most of these games ask a lot before you play

Online roleplaying games usually ask for a big download, a launcher, an account, a character creator and sometimes a subscription before you see anything, and a lot of people give up before they ever see the world. Until this hackathon Orvandel had the same wall: a visitor had to make an account, save a recovery code and build a character first. Wake now changes only the door. Tick one box, press the button, and moments later you open your eyes in Lanternfield as a ready Human Vanguard, standing somewhere worth looking at and able to fight. If you like that hero, Keep this hero asks for a name and a password and makes it yours, the same character with nothing lost.

A first fight in the starting camp: the hero facing a wolf inside a white ring telegraph marked on the ground, among lamp posts and autumn trees, with the ability bar and quest text along the bottom. — The first fight. Big attacks are marked on the ground before they land, so even the first creature asks for a step to the side.

The real game, not a demo

Combat is about reading the enemy. Big attacks are telegraphed on the ground in shapes the server tests when the fill completes, enemy cast bars say whether a spell can be interrupted, and every class has a rhythm where one move sets up the next. There are four nations, each with two peoples and its own view of the night the moon broke, and ten classes, each with a signature ability learned at 30: a Shardcaller draws constellations with light, a Gloamhunter swings on a line-arrow, a Hexweaver rewinds a target.

The character creator showing a Kitsar, an upright fox-folk warrior in leather armour, on a stage under the moon, with the list of nations and peoples on the left and the Wildmark Compact's description on the right. — Eight peoples with their own bodies. A Kitsar of the Wildmark Compact in the character creator.

A Shardcaller in the Proving Grounds among stone arches, a beam of light rising from the constellation they have drawn, with the twelve-slot ability bar below. — A class signature: the Shardcaller's Constellations, drawn with light.

Khar Varos at night: pale fortress walls and towers lit by hanging lanterns, with glowing embers floating over dark ground. — Khar Varos, capital of the Embered Throne, at night.

The broken moon Vael hanging dark and cracked in a bright blue sky over palm trees, white ruins and a beach in the Saltglass Isles. — Vael, the moon that cracked a thousand years ago, over the Saltglass Isles. It runs through eight phases every two hours of real time.

Five dungeons and a raid, and you never wait for a group

Each nation guards a dungeon, and a fifth is one every nation fears. The Group Finder puts a party together, and if you are short a healer or a tank, companions take the empty seats, so a small group can still run them. Every boss has its own fight: attacks to read, casts to stop, and moments where the whole group has to move as one. At level 60, players from every nation finally stand on the same side, in a raid against what has been waiting at the end of the story.

A party in the Unrung Chapel: a Pyreborn and companions fighting among stone pillars in blue light, with the party frames on the left and the dungeon map in the corner. — A Pyreborn and companions in the Unrung Chapel, the dungeon every nation fears.

The cross-faction raid at level 60: a full raid group spread across a floor striped with telegraphs, crystal spikes rising around the boss, and the raid frames down the left side. — The raid at level 60, where every nation fights on the same side.

Planning to spend fewer tokens

The hackathon required the Devpost Learn Skill Pack, and the rules asked for a new project built in the submission period. Orvandel's first commit is October 9, inside it; the base game predates my installing the skill pack, and Wake now is the part planned through its scope, PRD and spec steps. My own goal was to get quality output from AI while spending fewer tokens on a codebase this size. One read-only mapping pass of about 137k tokens gave the build agent exact entry points. The build took about 451k tokens for three slices (database, both servers, client and tests), each slice's check passing before the next. Earlier unplanned feature passes in this project ran 300k to 800k tokens each, so about 150k per slice is cheaper, but the mapping pass counts too: about 588k for one feature that touches the whole stack.

What is not claimed

Every number in this post is mine. The Wake now timings come from a headless browser on my own machines, and the token counts from my own sessions, so neither is graded by anyone else. The game is in beta and free to play, and I have no player numbers yet to show that a shorter door keeps people. It needs a desktop browser with WebGL 2; phones are not supported. Guests cannot enter dungeons, the raid or the Proving Grounds, and are cleaned up after 24 idle hours. Some art is AI-generated (the playable hero models, the bosses and the painted key art), and every third-party and generated asset is credited on the wiki.

Related project

Orvandel: an original browser MMORPG under a broken moon, where one click on Wake now puts you in the world as a ready hero with no account, download or form

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