Heritage Warden

A real-time strategy crisis simulator where the player acts as a global director of Cultural Heritage Management (CHM). Using a global satellite map, players monitor UNESCO-style heritage sites. As crises—ranging from climate-driven floods and coral bleaching to overtourism and vandalism—flare up in real-time, the player must allocate limited Funds, Political Influence, and Local Support to intervene before the sites are destroyed.

Archaeogaming Context

• Cultural Resource Management (CRM): While Silent Sands focuses on the antiquarian past, Heritage Warden simulates modern Public Archaeology and CRM. It accurately reflects that preserving the past is rarely about brushing dirt off bones; it is usually about bureaucracy, budget allocation, and crisis mitigation.
• The Modern Threat Matrix: The game accurately portrays the greatest modern threats to archaeology: climate change (flooding in Venice, bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef) and unregulated capitalism/tourism (erosion at Machu Picchu).
• The Stakeholder Balancing Act: The inclusion of "Local Support" and "Political Influence" is a massive archaeogaming win. A common critique of global preservation (like UNESCO) is that it sometimes prioritizes the "stones" over the local Indigenous populations who live there. If a player saves a site but ruins the local economy (dropping Support to 0), they still lose the game.

Site & Crisis Metadata

Instead of individual artifacts, the metadata here tracks geographic locations and the dynamic events that threaten them.

1. Site Data

• id: Unique identifier (e.g., "venice").
• name: The real-world heritage location.
• lat / lng: Real-world geographic coordinates for the Leaflet map.
• unlocked: Boolean checking if the player has jurisdiction yet.
• unlockDay: The in-game day the site becomes active.

2. Crisis Event Data

• title: The name of the emergency (e.g., "Tourist Stampede").
• desc: The specific threat to the archaeological/natural integrity of the site.
• choices: An array of 2-3 intervention options. Each choice contains:
  • - text: The action taken (e.g., "Enforce strict ticketing").
  • - cost: The exact deduction of f (Funds), i (Influence), and s (Support).
  • - log: The narrative outcome of that choice.
• penalty: The severe, automatic consequence (loss of stats and narrative failure) if the player lets the 15-day response timer expire without acting.