Hand of the King Wiki
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HOTK is a kingdom-management game where the player acts through the Hand, reads the realm, resolves crises, and advances time one tick at a time.

What HOTK Is

Hand of the King is a text-driven political simulation set inside a procedurally generated medieval realm. The player is not just clicking upgrades. The player is interpreting pressure from houses, foreign powers, the church, the treasury, the council, and the succession line, then choosing what the crown should do.

The live product has three important surfaces:

  • hotk.dev is the public site, account dashboard, login flow, and browser game shell.
  • hotk.dev/campaign/ is the browser campaign console.
  • wiki.hotk.dev is this public reference wiki.

The engine is a Go API with SQLite-backed campaign state. The campaign console is a Vue UI that reads state, shows the docket, and submits player decisions. External LLMs can connect through scoped MCP advisor grants, but they do not bypass the player.

Player Role

The player is the final authority. The game can provide advice, proposal summaries, and simulated counsel, but the player chooses:

  • campaign name and difficulty
  • king identity, origin, trait, and path
  • docket option resolutions
  • royal actions
  • tax and trade policy
  • when to advance the tick
  • whether to connect an external MCP advisor

This matters because HOTK is designed around judgment. Two options can both be valid if they protect different parts of the realm.

The Core Loop

  1. Read the current state.
  2. Resolve one or more docket items.
  3. Spend royal action budget on proactive actions.
  4. Review what changed.
  5. Advance a tick when the turn is ready.
  6. Read the new log, crises, and warnings.

The game becomes interesting when these systems conflict. A generous answer may preserve legitimacy but empty the treasury. A hard military answer may end an immediate threat and poison the court. A trade marriage may stabilize revenue while changing succession risk.

Current Product Phase

The current product focus is hosted singleplayer and Advisor mode. The backend is ahead of the user experience, which means many systems already exist but some views are still being refined for readability and trust.

Use the wiki as a current reference for the intended shape. If the UI does not yet make a system clear, the wiki should explain what the system is supposed to mean.

What To Read First