Espadas de Hispania

This project is about building a home-made arcade cabinet, cut on a CNC machine and loaded with history games, to donate to libraries across Navarra as a free, hands-on way to explore the past. The idea grew out of 1066 (Preloaded / Channel 4, 2009), a Flash game I loved that turned a famous battle into something you could play and learn from. I want to bring that same experience to anyone who walks into their local library.

Every game is built to be as historically accurate as possible. Events, people, places and details are drawn from primary sources and respected scholarship, and each game lists its sources and includes short texts explaining what happened, so players can keep learning after they put down the joystick. The games will explore Navarra's history across the centuries, from the Vascones and the early Kingdom of Pamplona onwards, and won't be limited to battles: some may be tactics games, others puzzles, trading, exploration or storytelling. Every game will be bilingual in English and Spanish, run offline, and be designed so visitors of any age can pick it up in a few minutes. The goal is an educational tool that brings light and joy to the history of Navarra.

The first game is Espadas de Hispania, a turn-based tactics game in the style of 1066 set in medieval Spain between 722 and 1212. Its campaign follows Covadonga 722, where Pelayo's Astures hold the cave against an Umayyad expedition; Roncesvalles 778, where the Vascones ambush the Frankish rearguard in the Pyrenees; Simancas 939, where Ramiro II of León and his Pamplonese allies face Abd al-Rahman III across the river under an eclipse; and Las Navas de Tolosa 1212, as Sancho VII's Navarrese storm the Almohad caliph's palisaded camp.

Each battle moves from a watercolour map cutscene to raising your army, deploying it and fighting on a grid. Both sides give orders, which then resolve one company at a time: move, attack, shoot, rally, hurl rocks, hit-and-run, or taunt the enemy to shake their nerve. Spearmen can lock into a shield wall, companies can charge in an arrowhead, and every company's morale rises and falls with casualties, flanking attacks, and whether its leader is near or has fallen. Ambushes, hidden units and terrain, from mountain crags and olive groves to rivers and bridges, shape every fight.

Six peoples take the field: the Astur-Leonese, the Vascones, the Franks, the Umayyads of Córdoba, the Kingdom of Navarre and the Almohads, each recognisable by silhouette in 1066's signature style of black figures against a dusk sky. Custom battles let you pit any people against any other on any map. Every battle ends with a historical report and its sources. The game is built with plain JavaScript and data-driven JSON, with an automated test suite that plays every battle to check its balance.