A Million Years logo, a project by Chris Zemmel: a framed tile showing a ringed planet over a ruined arch

A project by Chris Zemmel

Live

A Million Years

Earth a million years after we're gone, grown from a single seed. Explore it, build a homestead, light a watchfire and plant your standard. The same seed is the same place for everyone who visits.

At a glance

grows a whole world, the same for every visitor
1 seed
play without an account or a download
Guest
geography, climate, weather, life, sky and sound
Procedural
React Three Fiber, in the browser
WebGL

Previews

a-million-years.zyric.de
A Million Years, Find a world: desktop view
A Million Years, Find a world: phone view
Find a world. The start screen, rendered live behind the menu: a world of the day, sign-in, or play as a guest.

Captured at a-million-years.zyric.de as a guest, rendered in software without a graphics card, so the light is flatter than on a real GPU.

Overview

A Million Years is a solo worldbuilding project about procedural generation, persistence and discovery. Every world is generated deterministically from a single seed, producing its geography, climate, weather, life and sky.

A seed is a place rather than a session: a world can be revisited, shared and explored together while it stays identical for everyone who visits. It is built with React, TypeScript, React Three Fiber and a fully procedural audio system.

Process

  1. Step 1: One seed, one world

    The seed decides everything: the land, the climate, the weather, what lives there and the sky above it. The same seed always grows the same world.

  2. Step 2: Shared by its seed

    Because a seed is a place, you can send it to someone and they stand in the same world. No accounts, no downloads, and no backend required.

  3. Step 3: Leave a mark

    Build a homestead, light a watchfire, and plant your standard.

  4. Step 4: Time passes

    Weather changes and moons drift overhead, and every world develops its own character from the same underlying rules.

By design

  • Creative research. Built to improve my worldbuilding: procedural generation, atmosphere and discovery.

  • A place worth returning to. An experiment in what makes a place feel worth coming back to.

  • The engine behind the village. The Christmas Village grew out of A Million Years and runs on the same engine.

Honest status

Live

Live, and free to explore in the browser at a-million-years.zyric.de.

Stand in a world

Open it in a desktop browser, and you are standing in a world grown from a seed.

Open A Million Years(opens in a new tab)

Live at a-million-years.zyric.de. Questions go to chris@zyric.de.

A Million Years · Zyric