Meat Camp

Meat Camp is a free hunting and camp game you can play in your browser with no download. A small log camp sits at the bottom of a snowy valley, with a fire pit, two tents and a line of hungry villagers waiting at the south gate. North of the fence the valley climbs through four zones: an open meadow, the pine woods, a grove where elk graze and a rocky ridge where polar bears live. You play the hunter in the blue parka, and the camp eats only what you bring home.

You only walk. Your axe swings by itself at any animal you walk into, and every animal you bring down drops steaks that jump onto the frame on your back. The steaks stack into a tall tower that leans when you turn and wobbles when you stop short. Walk carefully and the tower holds; take a sharp turn with a heavy load, dash or get hit and steaks spill onto the snow. You can pick them up again, but they do not lie there forever.

Back in camp you drop the meat at a station. The Fire Pit grills skewers, the Smokehouse turns two steaks into a smoked ham and the Stew Pot cooks three into a bowl of stew that pays the most. Villagers queue at the counters, take the food and pay copper coins, but the coins drop in a pile beside the counter. Walk over the pile to carry the coins, then bank them in the camp chest or spend them straight away. Every day has a goal of fed villagers, and every day you finish pays a bonus.

Coins are spent by standing on a price pad. A ring fills around the pad first, so walking past one costs nothing, and right after a purchase it fills more slowly until you step off. Then the coins you carry go in first, then the coins in the chest, until the pad is paid. Pads open the gate to the next zone, build the Smokehouse and the Stew Pot, give you a bigger pack, a sharper axe, snow boots, pack rope that steadies the tower and torches for the fence, and hire a crew: a helper hunter, a cook, a cashier who carries the coin piles to the chest and a runner who takes meat from a rack by the gate to the stations, so you can drop your load and head straight back out. A crew keeps working while you are away: come back after ten minutes or more and they hand over the coins they earned, plus logs in the woodshed if you hired a woodcutter, for up to eight hours.

The animals fight back, and each one warns you first. Hares only run. A wolf crouches and a red line shows where it will lunge. An elk lowers its head and kicks backwards into a red cone if you hit it from behind. A polar bear rears up and charges down a long red lane. Dash out of the red and the attack misses; stay in it and you are knocked down for a moment, and something comes loose: part of your tower, the coins you carry, or, with nothing else to lose, your axe, which stops swinging until you walk over it again. The first three minutes are gentle, so new players lose less.

Every few days a blizzard rolls in at night. The gates shut, the sky goes dark and wolves gnaw at the fence. Where a log breaks they slip inside and steal from your stations. Hit them before they get out and they drop the meat. Hold the fence until dawn for a bonus. When you have opened Bear Ridge, the Great White Bear comes on a blizzard night of its own. Beat it and the valley throws the Meat Festival.

From the fourth day a trader parks his sled just outside the north gate and asks for a number of raw steaks before nightfall. He does not pay in coins: a crate of goods rides on the sled, and filling the whole order sets it down by the gate for you to open. Each order brings the next of four goods. The Golden Axe doubles your axe damage for two minutes, Snowshoes make you run a third faster for two minutes, Sled Dogs let you carry half again as much until dawn and a Spice Sack makes every dish pay half again as much until dawn. Raw meat on the sled is meat that does not reach the stations, so each trip home asks a question: feed the villagers and the day goal now, or fill the order for an edge later. An order you leave half done goes away at the end of the day.

After your first blizzard night a new pad appears by the east wall: the Timber Grove. Pay for it and a gate opens onto a birch wood beside the camp. The valley pines are never felled, but the white birches with a red band are there to be chopped: walk into one and your axe swings at it, and a few hits bring it down, fewer with a sharper axe. A felled birch drops three logs onto your pack. Logs share the pack with meat. Carry them to the woodshed by the gate and stack them there. While the shed holds wood, every station cooks half again as fast, and a log burns for every few dishes. On a blizzard night the shed lights a bonfire at the fence, and every five logs keep one wolf away. The stump grows back into a birch after a while.

Once the Elk Grove is open, an Expand Camp pad appears inside the fence. Pay for it and the old palisade comes down: a wider wall rises further out, the stations move to bigger plots and a Great Fire burns on a new plaza in the middle of the camp. The fire burns logs from the woodshed every night. A full shed keeps it hot and its ring of light wide; a short one lets it cool and the circle shrinks. On a blizzard night the light is safe ground. Wolves that step into it slow down, back out and steal nothing there, fence logs inside its glow count as lit, and a hunter who stays out in the dark slowly gets cold and walks slower until he warms up by the fire again. The cold never hurts you. By day, counters in the firelight keep their queues waiting longer, and a bigger fire kept hot brings villagers a little faster. A Great Fire pad on the plaza makes the fire bigger, paid in coins and logs.

The bigger camp has room for a Tannery on the plot in its north-west corner. Once it stands, every wolf, fox, elk or bear you bring down also leaves its hide, and the hides ride on top of your tower, taking room like steaks and logs do. Drop them in the ring beside the Tannery and they go up on a stretching frame, where each one slowly turns into a roll of leather. The Fur Stall in front of the Tannery sews the leather into fur coats, and villagers in fur hats queue at its counter to buy them, paying more than a bowl of stew. Upgrading the Tannery adds a frame and tans faster. A Hire Woodcutter pad by the east path takes on woodcutters in red knit caps: they walk to the Timber Grove, fell the banded birches and carry the logs to the woodshed, and they stop when the shed is full.

The festival is not the end. Red foxes move into every open zone, and they hunt hunters. A fox slinks after anyone carrying a big tower, crouches behind them and darts in along an orange line to snatch a handful of steaks, then runs. Dash out of the line, or chase the thief down and chop it before it gets away to win the steaks back; a fox in mid-dart is too quick for the axe. In camp the Trophy Arch raises the Great White Bear skull over the north gate and lets you hire every crew member a third time and buy the biggest pack. The last goal is the Winter Feast.