new home

The game

One fire, one winter.

New Home is an incremental game. You start with a fire and an empty clearing. You gather wood to keep the fire going and to build tents, and every tent you finish brings someone in from the dark. Each of them can take a job: cutting wood, foraging, hunting, keeping the fire. Before long the camp runs itself, and your part becomes deciding what it needs next.

The wolves come every night, and the pack grows each time. Survive winter, and get to spring.

One run

Thirty days, a minute each.

A run is thirty days, and a day is one real minute. The clock stops whenever the game asks you something. You spend autumn getting ready. Winter shows you whether it was enough.

Where it came from

It started with A Dark Room.

1. 2013

   A Dark Room

   A Dark Room is a browser game by Michael Townsend. It opens on a black screen with one button, light fire, and grows from there a line at a time. There is almost nothing to look at, and I could not put it down.

2. 2021

   A first try

   I built my first version with React and Redux: a black page, a campfire, wood to gather and a few things to craft. It looked like the game I had in my head. It did not play like it, so I put it away.

3. 2026

   New Home

   This year I started again from an empty repo and kept only the fire. What I had missed the first time was pace. A Dark Room gives you something new every half minute at the start, then lets the people you gathered do the work while you make the decisions. New Home is built around that.