🏺 Relic Hunter: Nigeria Edition

Goal — every stage buries its relics under soil mounds. Step on a mound and your explorer digs it up. Find them all before time runs out, keeping your 3 lives.

Move with Arrow keys / WASD / D-pad. Drag the scene to orbit the camera and scroll to zoom — your keys follow what the camera sees. Face a beast, then press Space or ⚔️ to attack whatever is one step in front of you.

Coins 💰 start at 100. Earn more: dig an artifact +30, golden coins lying in the field +5 each, kill a lion +25, kill a snake +15, cut thorns +5 each, a beast caught in a trap +15, stage clear +40 plus 1 per second left. Coins and gear are saved on this device.

Hazards — 🦁 Lions wander the dig site, chase you when you get close, and cost 1 life on contact (they back off after). 🐍 Snakes rest beside mounds; step on one and it bites — venom kills in 12s unless you cure it. 🥀 Thorns block paths like walls; a machete cuts through. 🪤 Traps cost a life and send you back to the start. On stages 4–5 the 👹 palace Guard hunts you too.

Digging & hints — digging by hand takes a slow 1.9s (watch the bar); a ⛏️ steel shovel cuts it to 0.6s. You get 2 free shimmer hints per stage; after that the mounds stay dark — buy the 🗺️ Stage map so every mound is marked and hinted for the whole stage, or guess by watching where animals gather.

Your gear — open the 🛒 shop any time (pauses the action) or press B: 🔨 Spear (💰80) auto-aims and flies up to 4 tiles to floor the nearest lion, snake or boss — a point-blank kill pays a bonus 💰. 🔪 Machete (💰60) kills snakes and clears thorns up close, paying a close-strike bonus, and deals double damage to the boss while you stand beside it. 🔥 Torch (💰40) panics the nearest lion into fleeing. 🩹 Medkit (💰90): press H to restore a life. 💧 Anti-venom (💰70) auto-cures a snake bite. 📡 Metal detector (💰120): mounds within 2 steps glow while you own it. 🗺️ Stage map (💰150): consumed at stage start and marks every mound. ⛏️ Steel shovel (💰140): digs take 0.6s instead of 1.9s, forever.

Camera & screen — drag the scene to orbit, pinch (or ＋／－ buttons, or scroll) to zoom, and tap ⛶ in the top bar for fullscreen on mobile. Lions and snakes are marked with glowing rings; thorns blaze orange-red.

Leaderboard & stars — sign in with start.ng. Each cleared stage saves your best Score (100 points per artifact + 10 per second remaining) and time left to the shared board. Stars ⭐ rate your stage: keep all 3 lives for ⭐⭐⭐, ⭐⭐ with two, ⭐ with one.

BOSS fight! — dig the final artifact of any stage and its guardian awakens: the Stone Beast of Nok, the Roaring Titan of Ife, the River Serpent Lord, the Palace Warden, or the Esie Stone Golem. Before each beast you get one last moment to grab 🔨 spears / 🔪 machetes from the 🛒 market. The boss stalks the field with a life bar over its head; before every attack the ground GLOWS — red = fist slam, orange = fire (it burns for a while, don't step in it!), gold = a ring of stone spikes (5 tiles — get out of the zone). Step clear during the glow and you dodge (+10 score). Strike it with 🔨/🔪 as many hits as the bar shows; a landed blow staggers the beast back. It gets faster and deadlier every stage.

Extras — answer the 🧠 Trials at the end of every stage for +💰15 a piece. Floating emojis 😡😴😱 show what every beast is up to. The board sometimes 🌋 rearranges its walls mid-stage, so rethink your route! Tap 📷 in the top bar for photo mode (rotate, zoom, save a PNG with your explorer and relic). Listen for the savanna wind, chirping birds, drums — and your heartbeat when danger is one step away. The highlife jingle plays when you clear a stage!

The journey — Stage 1 Nok (~1000 BCE terracotta & iron) → 2 Ife (12th–15th C royal bronzes) → 3 Igbo-Ukwu (9th C bronze hoard) → 4 Benin (15th C palace bronzes, the Guard!) → 5 Esie & Owo (soapstone & terracotta). Every artifact card tells the true story.