Controls and tips
How to play
If you have played a town-builder before, you will be at home. If you haven’t, the first few minutes are easy.
The basics.
You start with a small plot and some FolkGold. Click a tile you own to open the build catalogue, put down a wheat field and a barn, and the farm begins to work. Your first goal is on screen: sell 10 bread for 500 FolkGold.
Controls
- Click a tile
- Select it. If it is clear and yours, the build catalogue opens against that tile.
- B
- Open the build catalogue.
- Left-drag
- Pan. The land follows the mouse.
- Right-drag
- Orbit the camera round your farm.
- Mouse wheel
- Zoom in and out.
- Q and E
- Quarter-turn the view left or right.
- H
- Home: back to a sensible view over your own land.
- M
- Open the market.
- Space, 0, 1, 2, 3
- Pause, and set the game speed to 1×, 2× or 4×.
- F1
- The game menu: save, load, new game, speed and overlays.
- F5 and F9
- Quick save and quick load.
- Esc
- Back to select mode.
The loop.
Everything follows one loop: grow, store, process, sell, expand. A wheat field grows wheat, a barn stores it, a mill turns wheat into flour, a bakery turns flour into bread, and a market sells it. What you earn buys more land and more buildings.
Goods live in buildings, and workers carry them. A mill runs when wheat has actually been delivered to it, and a market only sells what somebody has carried there.
Land and building.
Land you can buy is outlined in yellow. You can only buy a tile that shares an edge with land you already own, and a building needs every one of its tiles to be yours. Click a tile to inspect it, or press B to open the build catalogue.
If something stops.
- Click the building. A stalled building says why, for example that it is waiting for wheat or that storage is full.
- Lay roads. Workers walk on a road at twice the speed, so a short road can save a lot of time.
- A river splits a town. A bridge, laid like a road, joins it back together.
- Don’t over-build too fast. Every worker is paid, whether or not there is anything for them to do.
Your saves.
Your farm is saved in your browser, on your own device. You can play without an account. If you would rather your farm was kept safe if the browser forgets it, create one from the sign-in panel.