====== River Oath ======

River Oath is a turn-based strategy game written for Kalgoorlie Retro Gaming. The River Intendancy of the Lian Empire has stolen the dike money, and the old flood-markers say the Great Flood will come in the seventh month of the twentieth year. You lead a band of outlaws on the Long Jade river and its two branches: win the people over with deeds that become tales, steal and expose the officials' ledgers, raid their garrisons on a hex battle field with boats and river current, and bring the Intendancy down before the water does. Keep the dikes standing as you go: a victory with the dikes in good repair is **The River Kept**; with the dikes failing it is **A Hollow Pardon**.

One to four players take turns at one computer, with a hand-over screen between them, and the computer leads the other bands. With nobody playing you can watch the computer play every band. In the browser you can also play **online** with up to six players.

It has the same retro look as [[sengoku:start|Sengoku]] and [[brokenseal:start|The Broken Seal]], whose screen and hex battle it builds on. Every place, person and tale in it is invented.

The current version is **0.1.2** (7 November 2026).

===== Two editions, one game =====

^ Edition ^ Where ^ Players ^
| **Browser** | https://kalretro.au/riveroath/play/ (nothing to install) | One player against the computer, up to four taking turns at one computer, none (watch the computer play), or **multi-player games** online for 2 to 6 |
| **Desktop** | Windows and Linux, from https://kalretro.au/riveroath/ | One player against the computer, up to four taking turns at one computer, or none |

The two editions have the same rules, screens, music and save files. The browser edition is a port of the desktop's Free Pascal code to TypeScript, and its self-test plays the desktop's own recorded games and battles and must come out exactly the same. **Export** and **Import** move a campaign between the two: see [[riveroath:saves|Saves]].

===== Pages =====

^ Page ^ What it covers ^
| [[riveroath:strategy|Strategy guide]] | For new players: the first year, food, goodwill and tales, the dikes, choosing a way to win, battles, keeping your people, common mistakes |
| [[riveroath:playing|How to play]] | The month and its tasks, the river and the seasons, tales and goodwill, the dikes, the officials, the three ways to win, battles and hot seat |
| [[riveroath:online|Multi-player games]] | Players, invite codes, the open month and its deadline, raids, offers and prisoners, the emails |
| [[riveroath:installing|Installing]] | The desktop edition on Windows and Linux; the browser edition |
| [[riveroath:saves|Saves]] | Slots, autosaves, export and import, where saves are kept |
| [[riveroath:building|Source and licence]] | Building from source, the tests, the GNU GPL |
| [[riveroath:history|Version history]] | What changed in each version |

The same help is in the game: press **H** on the main screen.

===== Downloads =====

From [[https://kalretro.au/riveroath/]], the **Heisenbergs Files** area on the BBS, or the anonymous FTP at home (''riveroath'' folder):

^ File ^ What it is ^
| ''River-Oath-0.1.2-windows-x64.zip'' | Windows (64-bit): unzip and run ''river_oath.exe'' |
| ''river-oath_0.1.2_amd64.deb'' | Linux package for Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint and others |
| ''river-oath-0.1.2-linux-x64.tar.gz'' | Linux without a package (on the website and FTP) |
| ''river-oath-0.1.2-source.tar.gz'' | Source (Free Pascal 3.2.2 and Lazarus 4.4), GNU GPL |