Lights you put down
A Standing Torch, a Lantern, a Street Lamp, a Campfire or a Beacon: five lights that pool on the ground around them, from a torch’s small circle to a Beacon’s great one.
The World
Every street, park and river in Parallel Crossing is where it is in real life. The sun rises and sets on time, the moon keeps its phases, and the seasons turn with your half of the planet.
The map
The ground you walk on is the OpenStreetMap street map, laid flat and lit by the game’s sun and lamps. Close to you it’s detailed enough to read the street names; farther off, the wider map fills the horizon. The phone’s Map app shows the same map in 2D, with every flag, city and realm on it.
Day and night
Wherever you are, the game's sky follows the real one. At night the world falls to 6% of noon's light, the night's own monsters come out, and lamps, campfires and glowing mushrooms become the only light you have.


Drag across the picture: the same spot in Central Park at noon and after sunset.
A Standing Torch, a Lantern, a Street Lamp, a Campfire or a Beacon: five lights that pool on the ground around them, from a torch’s small circle to a Beacon’s great one.
Every character carries a Settler’s Lantern that lights the ground around you at night, so even your first night is never pitch black. A miner’s helmet, a firefly lantern or a Glowcap aura lights more.
22 kinds of monster only come out after dark, and at night every flag holds 50% more of them. On full-moon nights there are 50% more again, and the Werewolf walks.
The sky's calendar
The phone's Almanac app reads the real sky. Here is what it says right now.
Over a year the sun moves through the twelve signs of the zodiac, about a month each. While it is in a sign, that sign’s skill earns 10% more XP, everywhere in the world at once. Scorpio favours miners; Pisces, fishers.
The moon keeps the real moon’s phases. On the 3 nights round a full moon, rarer bugs and fish come out and every flag holds 50% more monsters. New-moon nights are the darkest of all: carry a lamp.
Spring starts at the March equinox in the north and the September equinox in the south, and a few bugs and fish only come out in their seasons. Nearer the equator than 23.44° there are no seasons, and everything is out all year.
The wilds
Out of town, the world raises wild flags from the map, about one every 2 km. How dangerous each one is depends on how many people really live around it: the emptier the land, the tougher its monsters, up to level 60.
A monster’s level is picked from its own range: in the wilderness it starts 70% of the way up. Wild flags only wake when a player comes within 1 km, so the world stays quiet where nobody is.
Land and water
Every flag reads the real land under it: parks and forests grow trees, rocky ground gives stone and ore, towns grow iron veins and herbs, and deserts and the cold north grow their own. Bugs follow the real ecoregion, and a flag’s rare fishing hole holds sea fish or river fish by the water it lies on.
Monsters of the sea and rivers come up where a flag touches water: 10 kinds in all, up to the Kraken and the Leviathan.
The monster calendar
13 visitors keep to their months, like Paddy O' Pockets in April and Krampus in December. Three rotations change part of the wild roster every month, so every legend gets its turn.
The beasts of the old stories don't stay put: three of them roam the far wilds each month, then move on.
GriffinUnicornCyclopsBasiliskPhoenixMinotaurFenrirEmber StagPegasusHydra
3 out at a time, 10 in all.
Kobolds, harpies, ogres and worse drift from land to land: two of them are about each month.
WyvernCave BatKoboldOgreHarpyBanshee
2 out at a time, 6 in all.
One of the great things of the deep sea comes up near the coast each month.
HippocampusKrakenLeviathan
1 out at a time, 3 in all.
Sound and music
Footsteps, blows, harvests, catches, coins and doors all make their sound, other players’ from where they happen. Music follows where you are, by day, by night and indoors, and every sound can be turned down, switched off, or replaced with a file of your own.
Be there on day one
Parallel Crossing is coming to iPhone and Android. Join the Discord to follow development, share ideas and hear first when the doors open.