Cairnheim is out in early access on Windows. It is a colony builder in the lineage of The Settlers.
Every plank, every loaf, every ingot is picked up by a settler and walked from cairn to cairn along roads you drew yourself. One carrier per road leg, goods handed along like a bucket chain: a long route is slow because it has few carriers, and a busy cairn backs up right in front of you. Congestion you can see — and fix with a road.
Your colony does not live on your disk. It lives on a server that keeps it running while the game is closed: carriers keep hauling, workshops keep producing, builders keep raising what you laid out. No account, no launcher, one colony, no save files — you live with your decisions.
Sail for what your island does not have. Marble and platinum are not on your map. They come from hand-authored expedition isles held by bandit camps: recruit a general, load him with swordsmen, spearmen and archers, and sail. You arrive with enough, or you do not arrive.
You are not alone on the server. Every colony that has been played can be visited — you walk around someone else’s network and see how they solved it — and one global channel connects everyone.
It is slow on purpose. Most of the time you are watching your network work: calm enough to hold a conversation over, readable enough for a chat to follow. If you stream it, your viewers can come and walk around your colony while you talk. One warning for streamers: launch the game once off-air first — the very first screen shows your recovery code, and whoever reads it can take your colony.
It is sold in waves of fifty seats at $12.99. The server has never held more than eight colonies at once, so I would rather watch fifty arrive than five hundred. The first wave is open.
Much of the art, the music and the narrator’s voice are generated and then reworked by hand; the design and the systems are mine. The page says which is which.
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/XBSCO1JFyhw
https://cairnheim.itch.io/cairnheim
Made by one person. Happy to answer anything about the transport model — it is where most of the time went.