Field guide

Look, locate, then verify.

Epochade is a free history search game for curious players, families, classrooms, and museum-minded readers. This guide explains how to read the three clues in each gallery, find the person and two objects tied to their work, use nudges and zoom, and then read a dossier that separates historical evidence from interpretation and uncertainty.

How a gallery works

1. Read the current label and scan the gallery. Each medallion shows a colour swatch and a glyph for what it carries; hover or focus one to read its trait words, or turn on large print trait words to keep them on screen.
2. Find the person, working evidence, and context record in that order. A mistaken look costs 180 points but never ends a visit.
3. Use up to three escalating nudges when needed. A nudge costs 180, the same as a mistaken look, so asking is never more expensive than guessing. Calm mode removes the time deduction.
4. Finish the label to open its cited dossier, timeline, vocabulary, interpretive boundary, and discussion question.

What happens if I leave halfway through?

An unfinished gallery is saved in this browser. The home page offers a clearly labelled Continue or Discard choice. Drafts are validated before restoration; a damaged draft is ignored without altering passport scores.

Are the portraits historical documents?

No. They are original interpretive illustrations, labelled as such in every dossier. They are not offered as documentary likenesses. Historical claims link to the institutional research trail, and image provenance is documented separately.

What changes in the daily archive?

Each Eastern Time date deterministically selects a gallery, layout, and one of four research lenses. Anyone opening the same date receives the same challenge. The last 28 dates remain replayable.

What does Epochade store?

Campaign scores, archive scores, settings, counters, and any unfinished gallery stay in local browser storage. There is no required account. This site counts page visits through Cloudflare: it sets no cookie, it cannot follow you from here to another site, and nothing from your play is part of the count. Exported passport files do not include the temporary unfinished-gallery draft.

Can it be played with a keyboard or reduced motion?

Yes. Use Tab to move among controls and Enter or Space to inspect. Focusing a medallion reveals its trait words, and every medallion announces its form, colour, carried object, and zone. A find is announced with the object and how many labels are sealed. Reduce motion, high contrast marks, larger text, sound cues, calm mode, and large print trait words are all in Settings, in that order, with export, import, and reset below them. A wrong look marks the medallion with a written Ruled out badge, so the feedback does not depend on animation or colour.

Keyboard shortcuts

• H asks for the next nudge.
• + and - zoom the gallery floor; 0 resets it to 100 per cent.
• Escape leaves the gallery and keeps your finds.
• ? opens the field guide, which lists the same shortcuts.

Shortcuts are ignored while you are typing in a field or while a dialog is open. The browser back button also returns to the galleries rather than leaving the site.

What is on the result screen?

Each finished label shows the score, its grade, a line-by-line breakdown of the time, mistake, and hint deductions, the par of 3,000 for a clean visit, one suggestion drawn from your largest deduction, your best result for that gallery, and your current archive streak. Replay this gallery restarts the same layout; your stored best is never lowered by a weaker replay.

What is a gold label worth?

The ladder is printed on the result screen and in the passport: Gold label 2,700 and above, Silver label 2,200 to 2,699, Bronze label 1,600 to 2,199, Study label below 1,600. No visit scores below 300.

What does sharing send?

No result leaves the browser on its own. Share a spoiler-free result opens a panel with the exact text, a Copy button, and a Copied confirmation. If the device has no share sheet and blocks the clipboard, the text stays on screen to copy by hand. It contains no figure names and no gallery answers.

Where do I see my record?

The museum passport lists every gallery, a visit record with galleries finished, objects found, average and best label scores, archive dates played, and your archive streak, then the five research badges and the label ladder. The five badges and their criteria are also listed on the home page before any of them is earned, and every archive tile shows a filled dot and your best score for a date you have played.

What happens if this browser cannot save?

If local storage is full or blocked, Epochade says so once and keeps playing. Scores from that visit will not persist, and the message clears itself when saving works again.

Play Epochade · Read sources and method · Review image provenance