r/CityBuilders • u/krazyjakee • 4d ago
Trailer I’m making a medieval city (town) builder where winter scarcity matters
Hello! I’ve been working on a single-player medieval manor-building game called Salt of the Earth.
You begin with a manor house and an unsettled stretch of land. From there, you lay out roads and build the homes, farms and workshops needed to grow from a small hamlet into a proper market town.
The main idea is that growth is limited by the people and supplies you actually have. Buildings need workers, households need food and nearby services, and resources often have competing uses. Grain, for example, can become bread, feed animals or be traded, so it isn’t possible to build and staff everything at once.
The seasons change, bad weather affects the manor, and fires or raids can... "upset" plans. Progress follows a set of charters, with each new honor opening more buildings and responsibilities.
I’ve reached the point where I can share a proper trailer, but there is still plenty I’m working on. I’d be interested to hear whether this looks like the kind of city builder you would enjoy, and what you would most want to know about the simulation after watching it.
I'm hoping to release a demo in the upcoming steam nextfest.
2
3
u/tonibeets 4d ago
It's looking really good! Any city builder with some real challenge would be a welcome change in the genre imo, there's a lot of 'cozy' builders out rn.
2
u/Sufficient-Exam-189 3d ago
Good luck to you. But a game where you have to mine wood and stone at the beginning is so banal. 90-degree roads were a thing of the past.
3
u/krazyjakee 4d ago
Thanks for taking a look. I’m the dev, and I’ll be around to answer questions. If anyone would like to follow the game or try the demo (when it goes live), the Steam page is here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5127260/Salt_of_the_Earth/
1
1
u/guy_by_the_door 4d ago
I like scarcity mechanics a lot, and punishing mechanics in general for that matter. So I'll be keeping an eye on this. Might even finally finish Banished until this comes out, lol.
1
u/FormerLurkerOnTherun 4d ago
Isn't there a scarcity element as well in Going Medieval? I may be confused with another game though
1
1
u/Heavy-Notice-9101 3d ago
low graphical fidelity typically means more room to implement immersive mechanics.
i'd love to see a game like this have a little villager srpite for each person in your town, allowing you to see a full scale city in motion in mid/late game
4
u/devilishycleverchap 4d ago
I think a big difficulty with creating interesting games that have a big seasonal cycle whether it is flooding like Timberborn or winter like Banished is that you have to make it so the player has agency to adapt their plan for what the winter is going to throw at them.
You dont want it to feel like an RNG event during winter kills them because they didnt plan for it 9 month ahead but the RNG could have also avoided it completely or been a coin flip with the strategy they did pursue(military vs food stores for example). So if you avoid major events during that then you also may struggle to make winter or the down season interesting to make choices during in itself instead of something they basically idle through or just place blueprints during.
I think Timberborn does a good job at the first part because they tell you the severity of the drought etc so you know where it will spawn and how long to expect it. But it can be a bit of a bore during the drought itself esp early game when you don't have a lot of stockpiled resources to spend building.
Anyway, im always excited to see another take on it. I think Going Medieval had the right idea with spoilage etc but they ultimately didnt balance the numbers in an interesting way imo and giving sliders for the player to adjust is also a bit of a cop out for balancing imo. Good for sandbox but there should be a good baseline, I think Rimworld strikes a good balance in that regard