Note: this page describes the original standalone project (a static site with one serverless leaderboard function). The version in this workspace adds a Python server; see chapters 11 and 13-18 of the guide.

Terrapin Trail II — Wiki

A comedic Oregon Trail-style RPG that follows the Grateful Dead on tour. You load a van with a crew, drive a real historical tour route show to show, keep gas, food, morale, and the van itself from running out, tape the concerts, and try to reach the finale. It is branded Terrapin Trail II on screen; the code and package are named terrapin-trail.

The whole game runs in the browser — one hand-written JavaScript file, no build step, no framework. The only server piece is a shared online leaderboard (the "Hall of the Fallen"). It ships as a static site on Vercel.

This wiki was generated from the game's source and its own design docs. Where the two disagree, the source wins — the game has grown past the original docs (it now has ten tour years and a multi-year campaign mode, not just the one 1977 tour the older docs describe).

Start here

• Getting Started — the goal, the flow of a run, and a first playthrough in plain terms.

Player guide

• Characters & Crew — the seven playable roles, the van-mate crew and their perks, and the character-builder mods.
• The Tour — the ten real tour routes, campaign mode, the once-per-run "Peak," and the finale.
• Resources & the Road — the eight stats, how a driving leg spends them, pace and rations, Shakedown Street shopping, and working the lot for cash.
• Van & Gear — van upgrades and the buffs they give, stash consumables, and creative-mode paint/naming.
• Taping, Scoring & the Hall — the taping mini-game, tape quality, achievements, the final score, and the leaderboard.

Developer guide

• Architecture — how the game is built: one file, two runtimes (browser and headless tests), the state machine, the data catalogs, saving, the backend, and how to extend it.

Quick facts

Where the game lives

The full source is in this workspace at data/uploads/terrapin-trail-vercel/. The game's own in-repo docs — README.md, ARCHITECTURE.md, SUBSYSTEMS.md, DATA-CATALOGS.md, and DEPLOY.md — are the primary references; this wiki summarizes and organizes them for a reader who wants the whole picture in one place.