June 16, 2026
Minecraft, but make it math
Show HN: Pen and paper resource development game with an emergent world
This notebook game promises Minecraft vibes, but commenters are already asking: simple for who
TLDR: Sortis is a paper-only building and resource game that tries to create a rich, computer-like world with just pen and paper. The community’s instant reaction: neat idea, but calling it “simple” sparked side-eye and jokes that this looks less like a board game and more like math homework.
A solo pen-and-paper game called Sortis just strutted onto Show HN with a bold pitch: all the satisfaction of building, upgrading, and discovering a world—without a computer. The creator says you can generate a living map, mine ore, clear forests, and level up your workshop using nothing but a notebook and patience. In theory, it’s the cozy dream: a brainy little world you can play while half-asleep, no screen required.
But the comments instantly zoomed in on the real drama: is this charmingly clever, or secretly homework in disguise? The biggest reaction came from a deadpan jab that basically stole the show. One commenter looked at the game’s claim of being “simple and emergent” and fired back with the energy of someone staring at a tax form labeled “light reading”: what exactly counts as a complex board game if this is the simple one? Ouch.
That tension is the whole soap opera here. Fans of puzzle-heavy systems will see a love letter to tinkering and worldbuilding. Everyone else may see a notebook full of mysterious symbols and feel their soul leave their body. The creator insists the math never gets worse than a sudoku, but the vibe in the thread is clear: one person’s relaxing analog game is another person’s surprise final exam. And honestly, that contrast is why people can’t look away.
Key Points
- •The article introduces Sortis, a solo pen-and-paper resource development game designed to simulate progression and automation without requiring turn-by-turn bookkeeping.
- •The game world is a grid of water, forest, and mountain tiles, with forests clearable for construction and mountains used for mining ore.
- •The main objective is to upgrade a workshop using increasingly higher ore grades obtained from mountain-based mines.
- •Map generation is done manually using two 8-bit seed values and an LFSR-based sequence for the X and Y axes, avoiding dice or calculators.
- •Each square's terrain is determined by XORing values from the X and Y sequences, and mountain ore level is defined by the number of trailing zeros in the resulting value.