Hephaestus is the game experiment I keep describing as a medieval economy and settlement survival sim, which is a compact way of saying: what if a village could become a spreadsheet, then immediately get hungry, tired, confused, and suspicious of your plans?
The goal is not to build a shiny trailer first and hope the hard parts politely leave the room. The interesting work is the machinery underneath: citizens with needs and moods, workshops that turn scarce resources into useful goods, jobs that only happen when the settlement can actually support them, and a world that keeps some rhythm when the player is away.
This build log is where that work gets a public thread. Some entries will be about visible features, some will be about architecture, and some will be about the moment a perfectly reasonable plan meets a test suite and leaves wearing a smaller hat.
Part 1 starts here because the project has reached the point where the story is useful to tell alongside the playable route. The current build is still early, but the shape is becoming readable: a practical browser game, a real backend, and enough moving parts that writing them down is no longer optional.