The First Winter

How it works, and the one rule underneath it

Three meters, each starting mid-scale, because this is a town that was fine last Tuesday. Twelve scenes, three options each, and no option moves all three meters the same way. That is the single rule the whole game is built on: a choice that is simply good is not a choice, and a survival story where the right answer is obvious is a story about nothing. Forty-two options were written and every one of them is a trade — asserted by a test that walks the table, not by anybody’s good intentions.

Nothing swings a meter by more than three, either, so a run is the sum of twelve modest decisions rather than one dramatic one. The moment a meter game has a single big scene, the other eleven become decoration.

The third act is gated, and that is what the second act is for

If the town does not trust you by the spring, it stops asking your opinion. The last four decisions are replaced by a shorter set you mostly do not get a say in — you are told rather than consulted, which is the only consequence in the game that changes what the game is rather than what it scores. It is also the only reason standing is worth spending stores for, and you can see exactly where it happened when the verdict says so.

The gate is read once, at the moment the third act would begin, rather than continuously. A standing that dips and recovers inside the second month should not flicker the shape of the story, and a player who has been told they are out should stay out.

There is no score, and that is deliberate

The ending does not add the three meters up. It names the one you protected and the one you spent, because that is the only honest summary of twelve trades — a total would imply there was a right run to have had. Underneath it is the full recap: every decision you made and the line of consequence attached to it, in order, so you can see the shape of the year you actually chose.

It runs in your browser and stays there

No account, no sign-in, and the game makes no network call. Your twelve answers become a short code in the page’s own address, so the link you copy replays your winter decision for decision for whoever you send it to — including whether the town stopped asking you, which falls out of replaying the choices rather than being carried separately. There is no code here that could send anything anywhere; the tools in this corner are forbidden to make requests at all, and a test enforces it. The one thing on this page that does talk to our server is the comment box at the foot, and only when you post in it.

Argue about it in the forum

The board’s forum is where this one gets genuinely heated, because there is no scoreboard to hide behind. Post which meter you held and be told what it cost the people around you.

This is fan-made, and unofficial

This is an unofficial fan game inspired by the television series Jericho, naming the work and its premise — a small American town cut off after a nuclear attack — under nominative fair use. It is a free, unofficial fan tribute, made for fun. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to CBS Studios, Paramount Global, or any official rights holder of Jericho.

The town here is not that town and nobody in it is named — a test walks the scene table and fails the build if a character’s name appears in it. Every line of text was written fresh for this page. No dialogue, plot point, script text, scene, still, logo or artwork from any television series is reproduced anywhere in it. Iron Realms — the strategy game the rest of this site is about — is an original fantasy world with its own map, its own houses and its own art, and has no connection to the world of Jericho.

The rest of the corner

The Jericho wing is new and growing. The fan tributes hub has the Westeros, Supernatural, King of the Hill, Fringe, Last Kingdom and Big Bang Theory wings alongside it, and the free tools that are not about anybody’s fiction. If you would rather play something with a map in it, Iron Realms is free and runs in a browser tab.