WattQuest energy-grid strategy game

Problem

Operating an electricity grid requires continuous tradeoffs between reliability, cost, emissions, public trust, and limited infrastructure. These interactions are difficult to communicate through static explanations. WattQuest turns them into an eight-turn crisis scenario in which every investment, dispatch policy, and demand-control decision changes the next simulated day.

Approach

The player leads Asterne’s emergency energy unit and chooses action cards that add generation or storage, reinforce the network, shift consumption, or impose political compromises. Each turn combines semi-scripted events with a deterministic 24-hour simulation. Advisors, charts, and a network map explain the consequences, while narrative flags and final scoring translate numerical outcomes into distinct endings.

Technical implementation

The simulation models hourly sector demand, nuclear availability, solar and wind profiles, hydro reservoirs, gas and imports, battery charging and dispatch, transmission constraints, curtailment, load shedding, cost, and emissions. A reducer owns all game-state transitions, and a seeded random-number generator makes runs reproducible. React components render cards, advisors, metrics, energy charts, the SVG map, tutorials, and ending panels. Vitest suites cover simulation invariants, scoring, reducer transitions, and full gameplay flows; Vite produces a static Netlify-ready build.

for (let hour = 0; hour < 24; hour += 1) {
  const demand = computeDemand(state, hour, weather);
  const supply = dispatchGeneration(state, hour, weather, battery);
  const unmetMW = Math.max(0, demand.totalMW - supply.totalMW);
  hours.push(scoreHour(hour, demand, supply, unmetMW));
}