Combine five primordial elements into an entire civilization. 270+ discoveries, 8 eras, and a world that evolves on its own. Free, browser-based, no download required.
Tip: Click the fullscreen button (bottom-right of game) for the best experience. Your progress saves automatically.
Primordia starts with five elements: energy, water, fire, earth, and air. Drag them together to discover new materials, life forms, inventions, and entire civilizations. What begins as simple combinations (water + fire = steam) quickly branches into hundreds of discoveries spanning geology, biology, chemistry, technology, and culture.
Unlike other alchemy games, Primordia doesn't stop at recipes. The world you build is alive. Rain falls without you. Creatures evolve on their own. Volcanic tiles erupt and scatter obsidian across the map. Once humans appear, your civilization starts growing autonomously: population expands, resources accumulate, buildings go up, and settlers found new towns across a procedural biome map. Manual combining is always faster, but walk away and come back to find real progress has happened without you.
Drag elements from the left tray onto the workbench. Drop one element onto another to attempt a combination. Successful merges create new discoveries.
Drop elements onto THE WORLD panel to trigger world events. Storms spark life, rain floods the land, and meteors end eras.
The world runs on its own. Geology, biology, and civilization tick along in the background. Check the World Log for spontaneous discoveries.
16 absurd hidden combinations are scattered through the game. No hints, no mercy. A fish and a bicycle walk into a bar...
Your world evolves through eight distinct eras, each unlocked by milestone discoveries. The Primordial era gives way to the Dawn of Life, then on through the Bronze Age, Antiquity, the Medieval period, the Industrial Revolution, the Modern Age, and finally the Singularity. Each new era transforms the world visually and unlocks previously dormant potential in elements you've already found. That oil you discovered in Antiquity? Useless sticky pitch until engines exist.
Once humans appear, an idle economy kicks in. Your town gathers wood, stone, metal, knowledge, and gold from whatever elements you've discovered. It automatically constructs buildings (huts, granaries, forges, libraries, factories) as resources allow. Population grows based on available food and housing. When a settlement gets crowded enough, settlers found a new town on an adjacent tile of the procedural 5x5 biome map. You never manage the queue. The town always builds the next thing it can afford.
Primordia runs entirely in your browser. There is no server, no account, no data collection. Your save is stored in your browser's local storage and never leaves your device. Export your save anytime from the menu if you want to back it up or move it to another machine.
While you're holding an element, valid combination partners glow green in the tray and on the workbench. This hints at what's possible without spoiling anything you haven't found yet. Shift-click duplicates elements instantly. Right-click any tray chip to see its story and known origins. Hints are earned every 10 merges, with up to 3 banked at a time.