CHRONOS-HEIST: A Playable Multi-Era Temporal Mystery Game Powered by Sanity Content Lake

Description and use

CHRONOS-HEIST demonstrates real‑time causality across eras, powered by Sanity Content Lake and live queries, with a 3D canvas and AI‑assisted workflow.

Problem

Design a game where actions in the past instantly alter the future without page refresh, requiring a real‑time causal engine and a unified content source.

Outcome

The game demonstrates real‑time zero‑refresh causality across three eras, with a live 3D canvas, AI‑assisted workflow, and a Game Master console for human oversight.

Workflow

• Define era, room, and object schemas in Sanity
• Create causalityLink documents mapping past actions to future changes
• Commit a temporalAction to Sanity
• Causality Engine evaluates links and updates downstream objects
• Live Query broadcasts mutation to clients
• 3D canvas re‑renders affected compartments without page refresh
• Human Game Master reviews AI confidence and seals timeline

Evidence

CHRONOS-HEIST is a playable, multi-era temporal mystery game where changing the past rewrites the future in real time.

Source

Instead of treating a game world as ephemeral React state or a rigid SQL table, every room, object, physical wall, grandfather clock, causal rule, and paradox is modeled as structured content inside Sanity Content Lake.

Source

An atomic temporalAction document is committed to Sanity Content Lake. The server-side Causality Engine evaluates cross-era relationships. Sanity’s Live Query engine immediately broadcasts the mutation.

Source

We tied Next.js Server Actions directly to next-sanity/live. When client.patch().set().commit() completes on Sanity Content Lake, the 3D WebGL canvas re-renders hidden compartments without a single page refresh.

Source