Living Citizens
Every villager has needs — food, warmth, shelter, sleep, health, happiness, safety — that drive their decisions hour by hour.
What Makes Hearthfolk Different
Personalities & Memory
Traits, passions, favorite foods, inherited skills, and lasting memories shape who your townsfolk become over a lifetime.
Hearth & Home
Build a Great Hearth, paint Quiet Zones, and craft a settlement that feels warm, lived-in, and yours.
Deep Production Chains
Wool to cloth to clothing. Barley to ale. Manure to compost. Fuel that actually heats houses through the winter.
Stories Worth Remembering
The Town Chronicle records founding moments, first deaths, milestones — your settlement's history, written as it happens.
Fully Moddable
Every resource, building, need, and map type lives in plain JSON. Drop a folder into mods/ and you're modding.
The Hearthfolk
Small, sturdy, garden-loving villagers with names like Wilgo Barleyvale and Nimela Riverthwaite. They marry, raise children who inherit their parents' skills (mostly), make friends and rivals, eat their favorite meals, drink ale at the tavern, and remember the people they've lost.
Starting a New Game
Map Size
Small, Medium, or Large — how size affects resources, logistics, and how far your villagers have to walk.
Map Type
Default, Valley, Riverlands, or Highlands — each with distinct terrain, resources, and challenge.
Climate
Mild, Fair, or Harsh — how temperature shapes your crops, your warmth needs, and your winters.
Difficulty
Easy, Medium, or Hard — four multipliers governing how fast needs drain, how fast skills grow, and how hard winters bite.
Your Villagers
Needs & Survival
The nine needs every villager carries — which are lethal, which are gated, and how to keep them satisfied.
Life Stages & Family
Birth, childhood, marriage, ageing, grief — the full arc of a Hearthfolk life.
Skills & Jobs
Experience tiers, skill-priority job assignment, inherited skills, and the value of a good education.
Personality & Traits
Traits, passions, favorite foods, values, and the relationships that develop between citizens over years.
Legacy & Masterworks
Named masterworks, specialist roles, and earned nicknames — what makes a citizen worth remembering.
Land & Nature
Farming
Crops, orchards, vineyards, seasons, and the food variety bonus. Includes the Farming Calendar.
Soil Fertility
Per-cell fertility, crop rotation, blight risk, the manure-to-compost chain, and cover crops.
Livestock
Sheep, cattle, pigs, and chickens — pastures, breeding, fodder, and what each animal produces.
Wildlife & Hunting
Wild deer, boar, and rabbits — how to hunt without depleting the forest.
Foraging & Wild Plants
Berries, herbs, and mushrooms in the forest — the forager building, wild plant seasons, and the Mark tool.
Production
Your Settlement
Construction & Building
How to place buildings, the land-clearing and materials flow, roads, and tips for layout.
Housing & Comfort
House types, room quality, furniture and decor, and the happiness bonuses that come from a well-furnished home.
The Great Hearth
Your settlement's anchor monument — four tiers, warmth aura, and why it matters to keep the fire lit.
Settlement Zones
Painted-area tools: Reforestation, Priority Haul, and the Quiet Zone.
Immigration
How new Hearthfolk arrive, the role of the Inn, group sizes, and when to accept or decline.
Town & Society
Research & Knowledge
Unlock buildings through the knowledge system — schools accelerate everything.
Laws & Edicts
Permanent settlement-wide policies from the Town Hall's Book of Laws.
Town Chronicle
Your settlement's auto-written history — births, deaths, fires, milestones, and first buildings.
Settlement Approval
The at-a-glance 0–100 score that tells you how your town is doing across seven measures.
Status
Hearthfolk is in active development. Follow along for screenshots, devlogs, and release news.