Frostward
Steam Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4914350/Frostward/
Frostward is a cozy, punishing colony sim drawn in pixel art with a tick-based simulation running underneath. Every villager is an individual. They fall in love, learn trades, raise children, grow old, and freeze in the snow if you run out of firewood. That part is up to you.
Play it right here in your browser. There is no install and no account required. Because the art and sound are generated procedurally using code, the game is only 2 MB and loads quickly.
Playtest the Early Build
This is a free playtest build of the game. It is still in active development, so you might run into bugs or quirks. If something breaks, confuses you, or works well, please let me know in the comments. Your feedback directly helps fix bugs and improve the game.
Every settler has a story
Your colonists are individuals with their own lives, skills, and relationships.
- Distinct traits and skills: Settlers have unique names, personalities, and job skills that improve with practice and get rusty when unused.
- 20+ professions: Put villagers to work as sawyers, blacksmiths, brewers, tailors, doctors, or hunters to keep the settlement running.
- The colony Chronicle: Watch couples marry, children go to school, and the town's history write itself as the game logs births, rescues, and deaths.
- Nighttime torches: At night, villagers who are still working outside carry glowing hand torches, letting you see exactly who is still out in the cold.
Winter is the boss fight
Survival is a direct logistical challenge. When the temperature drops, your preparations are put to the test.
- Physical logistics: Every single item exists physically in the world and must be carried by hand. Set stockpile filters, keep-stocked limits, and supply chains to turn wheat into beer, hides into coats, and ore into steel.
- Hearths and chimneys: Homes burn real firewood hauled by hand. If a chimney is not smoking, the family inside is freezing.
- Progressive growth: Start with a basic wooden camp and expand into stone masonry, open marketplaces, and steam pipes heating entire districts.
- A shifting world: Maps generate from random seeds with taiga forests, meadows, and coastal kelp beds. Overhunt the local deer and fish, and they will go extinct.
Defend what you build
As your colony prospers, it will draw unwanted attention from thieves and raiders.
- Hold the line: Build towers for guards, place rally flags to hold defensive formations, and fight off thieves and torch-bearing warbands.
- Stretcher-bearers: Wounded settlers are not immediately lost. Assign medical teams to carry them to the clinic before they bleed out.
Browser Playtest Notes
- Saves live in your browser (Local Storage). Clearing your browser cache will delete your progress. For long campaigns, wishlist the desktop version on Steam.
- Best Experience: Play in a desktop browser in fullscreen. Full gamepad support is included but seems to be buggy with the Itch.io embedded game.
- Daily autosaves: The game saves automatically at the end of every in-game day.
Frostward is made by a solo developer. If you survived the first winter, or even if your town was wiped out by wolves, leaving a comment or wishlisting on Steam helps a lot.
