Progress Knight

Progress Knight is a text-based incremental life simulation set in a fantasy medieval world. You begin as a beggar at age 14 with nothing, and work your way up a career ladder while paying your expenses every single day. Eventually you die of old age — and then you start again, stronger.

The core tension is simple and it never really goes away: income versus expenses. A better job earns more, but so does a better house, so the net gain can be zero. Most of the game is finding combinations that push net positive.

How to Play

1. Pick a task from the Tasks table to start accumulating XP. Concentration trains the skill XP, Productivity the job XP.
2. Promote when a task has enough XP to advance a rank. Auto Promote does this for you once unlocked.
3. Watch net income. Every day you accrue income from your job, pay expenses from your property, and adjust happiness. If net goes negative you are slowly losing ground.
4. Buy property and skills as coins allow. The Shop unlocks once you can afford 50x a tent's expenses.
5. Avoid evil — or embrace it deliberately. Blood meditation and dark magic raise your evil stat, which raises your net income but shortens your lifespan. Evil control mitigates that cost.
6. Die, then Rebirth. At 25 you unlock the Rebirth tab. Rebirth resets your levels, job, property and coins, but keeps max levels as permanent multipliers and unlocks more of the interface.

Controls

• Click a task row — select it as your active training task
• Promote button — rank up the selected task when it is eligible
• Auto Promote / Auto Learn — toggle automatic ranking and automatic skill purchases once unlocked
• Scheduling slider — divide your day between tasks
• Shop tab — buy property and permanent unlocks with coins
• Pause button — stop the clock
• Rebirth tab — perform Rebirth One or Rebirth Two
• Settings — export or import your save

Jobs

Three separate ladders, each a different route to the top:

Commoner	Military	Academic
Beggar	Squire	Student
Farmer	Footman	Apprentice mage
Fisherman	Veteran footman	Mage
Miner	Knight	Wizard
Blacksmith	Veteran knight	Master wizard
Merchant	Elite knight	Chairman
	Holy knight
	Legendary knight

Skills

All 16 skills cap at level 100, each with a small per-level percentage effect:

Skill	Effect per level
Concentration	+1% skill XP
Productivity	+1% job XP
Bargaining	−1% expenses
Meditation	+1% happiness
Strength	+1% military pay
Battle tactics	+1% military XP
Muscle memory	+1% strength XP
Mana control	+1% T.A.A. XP
Immortality	+1% lifespan
Time warping	+1% game speed
Super immortality	+1% lifespan
Dark influence	+1% all XP
Evil control	+1% evil gain
Intimidation	−1% expenses
Demon training	+1% all XP
Blood meditation	+1% evil gain

Note that Bargaining and Intimidation have negative expense effects — those are reductions, and they are your two pure income multipliers on the cost side.

Property

Property determines your expenses — the cost of living, which scales with what you own. This is the main brake on progress: a grand palace earns nothing but costs a fortune every day.

Starting from Homeless, the ladder runs through Tent, Wooden hut, Cottage, House, Large house, Small palace, Grand palace, plus Study desk, Library, Dumbbells, Steel longsword, Sapphire charm, Butler and Personal squire.

Dark Arts and Evil

The game has a deliberate moral choice built into its economy. Blood meditation and Dark magic raise your evil stat; evil raises your net income — and evil shortens your lifespan. Evil control raises your evil gain, which is how you push the income as high as possible before the lifespan cost catches up. The Arcane Association and dark magic unlock late and gate the academic and demonic branches respectively.

Time Warping

Time warping is the late-game progression mechanic: the Time warping skill raises game speed, so days pass and XP accrues faster as you level it. It pairs with Immortality, because running the clock faster burns through your remaining lifespan proportionally.

Lifespan and Death

Base lifespan is 70 years; you start at 14. Lifespan is extended by Immortality and Super immortality — both are skills that raise it, and both cap at level 100. Death triggers the rebirth prompt.

Rebirth

Two levels of rebirth, both of which reset job, property, coins and all current task levels while preserving max levels as multipliers:

• Rebirth One — a clean reset. Raises your rebirth count, which improves the multipliers you get back.
• Rebirth Two — resets harder, clearing max levels on every task, but awards evil based on your performance. The trade is permanent power in exchange for a much harder climb.

Offline Progress

js/HackTimer.js reconciles elapsed real time when you return, so the game keeps running while it is closed. It uses a Blob-based Web Worker and deliberately skips Internet Explorer 10.

Save Data

Progress is kept in localStorage. The Settings panel exports and imports a save, which is also how you move progress between browsers and machines.

About

Progress Knight was created by Ihtasham42 and is released into the public domain under The Unlicense — the most permissive license there is. There are no restrictions on use, modification or redistribution, and no attribution obligation.

• Original game source: https://github.com/Ihtasham42/progress-knight
• Original live build: https://ihtasham42.github.io/progress-knight/

It is also distributed through Armor Games and Crazy Games. See public/games/progress-knight/ATTRIBUTION.md for the full provenance record.