How this works
It's a leaderboard with castles on it. That's the whole thing. Here's the fine print, such as it is.
1. Biggest spender, biggest castle
Every house has one number: how much it has paid in total. Sort by that number and you get the realm. #1 gets the enormous castle in the middle, #2 gets the slightly less enormous one, and it keeps going down until somebody is living in a hovel with a goat. There are no price tags on castles. Nothing is locked. You are just wherever your number puts you.
2. It starts at one dollar
If the realm is empty, $1 makes you king of it. Three towers, a moat, the works. Then someone shows up with two dollars and you're not. Then three. You can see where this goes, and so can your bank.
3. Starting a house
Give it a name, pledge at least $1, pay through Stripe. Once that clears you get half an hour to dress it up: a logo (it goes on the flags), a motto, and a story for your book. Anyone can click your castle and read the book, so maybe don't put your address in it.
4. Funding someone else's house
You can put money into any house, including ones that aren't yours, from $1 up. Be clear about what that does: it makes their castle bigger and moves them up the board. You do not get the castle, a share of it, or anything else. Fund a friend. Fund a stranger out of spite for a different stranger. If you want your own castle, found your own house.
5. Ties and plots
Same total? The older house wins, so early birds get something for it. There are 24 plots in the realm. If you fall below #24 your castle still exists, it just isn't drawn, which in a game about showing off is basically the same as not existing.
6. What each spot gets you
| Rank | Castle | What you're getting |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | Palace | Cream plaster, copper roofs, gold on everything. The big one in the middle. Everyone else is technically your neighbour, but they know. |
| #2 | Château | Plaster and copper, one spot off the top. You can smell the gold from here, you just can't reach it. |
| #3 | Fortress | Proper grey stone, brown roofs, two towers. No gold, but nobody is walking in uninvited. |
| #4 to #5 | Castle | A stone keep behind a stone wall with a real gate. Respectable. Your mum would be proud. |
| #6 to #9 | Timber Hall | Log walls, a thatched hall and a wooden watchtower. It creaks, but it is yours. |
| #10 to #16 | Homestead | A wooden house and a fence. The fence is mostly decorative. So is the house. |
| #17 and below | Hovel | Mud, thatch, two goats, some chickens and a pig. The pig is the landlord. |
7. The boring but important bit
- Whole US dollars, from $1 to $250,000.
- Stripe handles the card. We never see it. We just get told yes or no.
- Your rank moves once Stripe says yes. Usually a couple of seconds.
- No refunds. You paid for a bigger castle than someone else and you got one. There is nothing to send back.
- Getting outbid costs you nothing extra. You just have a smaller castle now. Sorry.
- All of the money goes to the person who runs this. That's the business model. There is no token.
If you lose the page
Paying builds the castle; dressing it up is separate. If you close the tab before naming your house, go to /recover and paste the session id from the Stripe receipt. It works forever, not for thirty minutes.
Don't be weird
Names, mottos, stories and logos are public. Keep them at "could be printed on a mug at a family thing." Logos get checked by a robot before they fly; nudity, gore, hate stuff, other people's brands and phone numbers get bounced. Links have to be public https and carry nofollow, so this won't help your SEO. It will help your ego, which is the point. Break the rules and your house gets hidden. You keep the money. You lose the castle.