About This Game

A handful of villagers, a stretch of unclaimed land, and a world that will not leave it alone.

It starts small. Food runs low, so you cut the rations. Hungry villagers lose heart and work slower. The walls are still half built when a fire takes two houses - and then the horns sound.

How long can you keep this place alive?

You don't have to babysit every villager. Say how many go for wood, how many for stone, how many to the fields, and they sort out the rest themselves. Anyone without a job picks up a hammer.

A free bed and food in store draw newcomers. Each one is another pair of hands and one more mouth to feed.

Everything rests on morale. Hunger, the homeless, unburied dead and crumbling buildings eat away at it. Decorations, extra rations and won battles build it back. At zero, the village gives up.

Each act is a new map and a run of its own, and what you pick along the way changes how it plays.

• Orders - every few days, pick one. Finish it to earn a relic that strengthens the village until the end of the act, or other help.

• Folk Wisdom - your villagers learn from what they have been through and offer cards. Pick the one the village needs now.

Village gone? So be it. The Legacy stays, and the further you get, the more of it you earn.

• Spend it in the Passive Tree: start with more supplies, build faster, give your towers more bite.

• Complete Chronicles to unlock new buildings for good.

• Equip Runes before an act.

• Beat an act to unlock a harder tier: bigger raids, more disasters, more Legacy.

Fire leaps from roof to roof. After an earthquake, buildings may still stand, but they are no use to anyone. Plague will not wait for a doctor. Monster dens keep sending waves until you tear them down.

Train volunteers, spearmen and archers, raise walls, gates and towers, then place your soldiers where they are needed. When the army is too small, call up the levy. The Town Hall summons every villager to arms, but until you send them home, all work stops.

Every act ends with a final assault. Or with a boss that lets you know days ahead that it is coming.