From orbit
to the living room.

Aethergate is a procedural 3D world that runs in your browser. You fly between planets, drop into automatically built towns, walk into residents' houses, then design your own.

Screenshot from the game: the Gorqu system in the world with seed 42. Best played with a keyboard and mouse. Your progress is saved in the browser you use.

Five levels

You can go from orbit to the living room in a single session. Each level has its own generator, mode and controls. Every image on this page is a screenshot of the running game, in the world with seed 42.

Level 01 /play/#/space

A solar system from one seed

You start in your ship. The star, planets, moons, rings and asteroid belt are generated from the world seed. Fly free with the keyboard, or pick a planet and let the autopilot take you.

A spaceship in orbit around the home planet in a star system, with a list of six planets and a planet info card.
Cockpit and planet list01 / 02The Gorqu system: a class F star, six planets, moons and an asteroid belt. Every planet has an info card and a Land button.

Procedural features

  • The seed decides the star class, five to eight planets, moons, rings and the asteroid belt.
  • There are seven planet types: terran, ocean, desert, ice, volcanic, barren and gas giant. Each has its own palette, atmosphere and generator rules.
  • Planet textures are baked from the same tile map as the globe, so the continents you see from orbit are the ones you land on.
  • The night side of a planet is dotted with city lights, volcanic planets glow with lava, and NPC ships travel through the system.

Controls

WS
Thrust forward or back
AD
Turn left or right
QE
Strafe left or right
RF
Climb or descend
Shift
Boost
Click
Select a planet, the ship flies to its orbit automatically
L
Land on the planet you are orbiting
M
Open or close the system map

The Hangar button swaps ships: frigate, interceptor or freighter.

Level 02 /play/#/planet/…

A hexagon globe from noise

Land, and the planet becomes a globe you can spin. Continents, rivers, towns, roads and two civilizations come from the same seed. You can change the seed at any time.

A terran planet globe with seas, forests, snowy mountains, ice caps and the city labels New Babylon, Riverend, Coralis and Oakshire.
Terran planet01 / 03Gorqu Prime: seas in layers of depth, coasts, forests, snow-capped mountains and labelled cities. The big number at the bottom left is the seed.

Procedural features

  • The globe is built from hexagon tiles and 12 pentagons with accurate neighbours (a Goldberg polyhedron). The tile count is adjustable.
  • Terrain comes from 3D simplex noise on the sphere, so there is no seam at the poles. The result runs from deep sea to coast, beach, grassland, forest, desert, tundra and snowy mountains.
  • Coastlines and biome borders are rounded with contours instead of following the straight hexagon edges.
  • Rivers wind toward the sea. Neighbouring mountains merge into a single range.
  • There are two civilizations, fantasy and modern, with cities, land roads (A*), sea routes between ports, and bridges that appear automatically where a road crosses a river.
  • The seed, sea level and mountain density can be changed, or press Shuffle world for a new planet and solar system.

Controls

Drag
Rotate the globe
Scroll
Zoom
Click
A tile or city for details. A city card has a Land button
Ride a vehicle
Ride along on a caravan, ship or plane. Pick the Air, Land or Sea route. ←→ switch vehicle, Esc exit
Fly
Fly the ship over the surface with WS AD RF and Shift
O
Back to orbit
Save image
Download the current view as a PNG

The Settings panel (menu icon) holds the seed, sea level, mountain density, tile count and the hexagon outline toggle.

Level 03 /play/#/town/…

A town grown from the planet map

Pick a city on the globe and go down. The town is cut from the planet tiles, so its coast, rivers, mountains and roads out match what you saw from above. View it as a diorama, on foot, or behind the wheel.

A fantasy town seen from above: red-roofed houses, a river with a bridge, a market plaza, wooden walls and a beach.
Diorama01 / 06Amberfall, a fantasy town: streets radiating from the plaza, a river with a bridge, ships at the dock and surrounding land from neighbouring tiles.

Procedural features

  • The town is cut from the planet tiles. Coastlines, rivers, mountains and roads out of town match what you see on the globe, projected to metre scale.
  • Fantasy towns have streets radiating from a plaza, walls and gates, market stalls, wells and docks. Modern towns have a street grid, pavements, tall buildings in the centre, parks and street lamps.
  • Buildings are placed from the real footprint of each asset and face the street, so they never clip into each other.
  • Around the town there are fields in parallel rows, forests, foothills, beaches, lakes and bridges where roads cross rivers.
  • The 2D planner rerolls the layout and sets the density without changing the terrain. It locks once you have built a house, so that house is not broken.
  • Residents walk the streets, traffic moves, and day turns to night with the world clock, with lights on after dark. The look can be Normal or Pixel.

Controls

Diorama
Drag
Rotate the camera
WASD
Pan the camera (arrow keys work too)
Scroll
Zoom. The Pixel view has three levels: Near, Normal, Far
123
Diorama, walk, drive
Walk
WASD
Walk
Shift
Run
Space
Jump
E
Enter a house or get in a vehicle
Esc
Back to the diorama
Drive
WS
Accelerate, then brake and reverse
AD
Steer
Space
Handbrake (drift)
Shift
Speed up
E
Get out
Town layout (2D map)
SparseNormalDense
Building density
Enter
Reroll the layout
Backspace
Back to the previous variation
Esc
Cancel. The Apply button rebuilds the town

Level 04 from Town mode

Step into a resident's house

Stand at the door and press E. Houses, cottages, apartments, shops, taverns and offices have an interior plan that follows the shape of the building outside.

A house interior seen from above in a dollhouse style: orange tile floor, a floor lamp, a chair, curtained windows, stairs to the upper floor and the player character.
Dollhouse viewFloor 1 of 2Walls that block the camera are hidden. The stairs on the right lead to the second floor, and an Exit prompt appears near the door.

Procedural features

  • Interior size is bounded by the building footprint, and the door sits where it does outside.
  • Stairs, doors and walking paths are reserved first, then furniture is placed. Every piece is checked for reachability.
  • Stairs connect the floors, and the state of each floor is saved separately.
  • Lights, cabinets, the TV, fires and item positions stay as you left them, even after changing planet or reloading the page.

Controls

E
Enter through the door. Inside: use, pick up or put down items
WASD
Walk
Drag
Rotate the camera
Esc
Leave the house

Inside a house you can sit, sleep until morning (the world clock advances), open cabinets and the fridge, switch on lights, the TV, the radio and the fireplace, and move items. You also use the stairs with E.

Level 05 /play/#/home/…

Design a house and its yard

From Town mode, press Build House and click a house. The seed gives a complete furnished plan. You can redraw rooms, change the roof, arrange items, then apply it to the town.

The 2D plan editor: a plot with four rooms, stairs, a green yard, the style and seed panel on the left and the item catalog below.
2D map01 / 03The plan generated by the seed: living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom around the circulation, plus a yard inside the plot boundary.

Procedural features

  • The seed produces the plan, roof, stairs, openings, furniture suited to each room and the yard. A new seed starts over, while Variation reshuffles the automatic parts and keeps what you have edited.
  • There are three styles: Classic (brick and gable roof), Cottage and Tropical Modern, each with its own materials, furniture and plants.
  • A house can have 1 to 3 floors plus an attic. A plan can be boxes, free-angled polygons or curves, including round rooms.
  • The 2D map and the 3D model read from one design, so an edit in either shows up in the other right away.
  • Roofs can be gable, hip or cone. Height and eaves can be adjusted, split by section, or dragged directly in 3D.
  • Items attach to the floor, a wall or a table. Invalid positions are marked red and rejected. Apply also rejects a yard that runs into a road or a neighbouring plot.
  • The draft saves automatically with Undo and Redo until you press Apply to town.

Controls

2D map
Select / move
Pick a room, drag plan points to change its shape
BoxPolygonCurve
Draw a new room. Double-click finishes a polygon
YardPlot boundary
Draw garden zones and extend the plot into open land
Number of floors
1 to 3 floors. Tick Add an attic for an attic
Diorama
Click the catalog
Add a sofa, bed, cabinet, lamp, plant and more to the active floor or the yard
Drag
Move the selected item. Right-click to pan, scroll to zoom
Edit roof in 3DEdit walls in 3D
Drag control points directly on the model
Open roof / walls
A cutaway to see the interior
General
Ctrl/⌘Z
Undo. The Redo button is at the top right
Explore
First-person walking inside the house and yard: WASD walk, Shift run, drag to look, Esc back
Apply to town
Updates the house, yard, doors and collisions in town

From seed to furniture

No level is drawn one by one. The same seed always produces the same world, and each level inherits from the one above it. The example below uses the world with seed 42.

  1. Seed42The world number. Shuffle it or type your own.
  2. OrbitGorqu systemA class F star, 6 planets, moons and an asteroid belt.
  3. PlanetGorqu PrimeA hexagon globe with 16 cities and two factions.
  4. TownAmberfallThe layout derives from the planet's coast, rivers and roads.
  5. HomePlan and furnitureDerived from the building and plot in town.
Deterministic
The same seed gives the same world. Each subsystem has its own seed namespace, so changing one part does not reshuffle another.
Saved in your browser
The home planet, house designs and interior state are saved in IndexedDB and localStorage, then restored when you come back.
One 3D engine
Every level shares one three.js WebGL context. Only the mode on screen is loaded and rendered.
Adaptive graphics
Pick Auto, High, Medium or Low. On Auto, the resolution drops or rises to follow your device's frame rate.

Open a tab.
Start exploring.

  1. Pick a planet and press L to land.
  2. Click a town on the globe, then choose Land in this city.
  3. Press E at a door to go in, or use Build House to design your own.

Move with WASD. Common keys: J missions, P pause menu, B mute. Your progress is saved in the browser you use.