Salt and Soil: A Frontier Family Sim Demo

ONE HOMESTEAD. ONE FAMILY. THREE CENTURIES.

Build a home, make a living, and leave the next generation something worth inheriting.

Guide one family through life on the American frontier in a turn-based colony sim spanning 1607–1900. Each turn is a year: put your household to work, develop your homestead, and decide how to meet the changes arriving at your doorstep.

MAKE A LIFE IN A WORLD THAT KEEPS CHANGING

Towns grow, borders shift, and trade routes change. Wars, migration, gold rushes, and the arrival of the railroad transform the continent over nearly three centuries. Watch history unfold on a map of North America as your family finds its place within it.

New settlements bring new neighbors. Changing markets create opportunities and risks. Plan for the year ahead while adapting to a world that keeps moving beyond your fields.

BUILD A HOMESTEAD THAT CAN OUTLIVE YOU

Grow crops, raise livestock, build workshops, and trade what you produce. Divide your family's labor between immediate needs and plans for the future. Every new building takes resources; every task needs someone to do it.

Expand production, improve storage, or prepare for leaner years. Decide what to keep, what to sell, and what your household can afford to risk. The home you build becomes the next generation's starting point.

Your neighbors matter, too. Trade and cooperate with nearby settlements and Indigenous nations, build relationships, and deal with tensions and bandit threats that can disrupt your plans.

WATCH YOUR FAMILY BECOME A DYNASTY

Children grow up. Marriages bring families together. Deaths leave gaps in both the household and its workforce. Personal traits and relationships make each generation a different family to guide.

When one leader's life ends, an heir takes over the homestead. Follow births, marriages, and succession in your family tree as a handful of names becomes a story stretching across generations.

BRING THE YEAR'S TROUBLES TO THE FAMILY TABLE

Every year ends with a Family Council. Life on the homestead and events in the wider world become decisions about people: whom to help, what to risk, and which future to pursue.

Welcome a newcomer, invest precious resources, or send a family member away to learn a trade. Your choices can change the household's resources, its relationships, and who will be there when the next year begins.

The years pass. The family grows and changes. What will the next generation inherit?