Crownfront

Crownfront is a turn-based strategy game played on a board that sits on the floor of a room. Your castle, farms, forests and army are pieces on that board, and you can see the whole kingdom from one end to the other, including the enemy's side.

It has the shape of a classic RTS. You gather resources, put up buildings, train units and attack. The difference is that it all happens in turns. Every unit moves up to three tiles and takes one action, and there is no clock. Nobody wins because they clicked faster.

Every unit eats

This is the mechanic the whole game is built around. There are two resources. Wood builds everything and trains every unit. Food keeps them alive: every unit you own eats one Food per turn, and it comes from your farms and your castle. Farms take several turns to build and produce nothing until they are finished. Run short and every unit on the board starts losing health each turn until you fix it. Recruit too early and your army starves. Play it safe and build farms first, and the enemy turns up with a bigger army while you are still planting. Most matches are decided by how well you handle that gap.

How a match goes

You start with a castle, a worker, a warrior and a scout, with trees nearby. Wood is the first bottleneck, and almost straight away you have to choose whether the next building is a farm or a barracks.

The castle trains workers and the cheap early units, Warriors and Scouts. A barracks trains Soldiers and Archers, a tier above them and worth the wait. Trees run out, so you will be sending workers further afield for wood while keeping enough farms up to feed everyone. Your castle can be upgraded twice for more storage, faster training and more health.

Melee units hit from the next tile over, and the defender hits back. Ranged units hit from three tiles away with no retaliation, but they fall fast if melee reaches them. Buildings cannot fight, so your castle is only as safe as the army in front of it.

The match ends when one side's castle falls, and everything that side owned goes with it.

Two maps, up to three opponents

There is a two-player map for a straight 1v1, and a four-player map where you pick your colour, choose how many AI opponents you face and set each one's difficulty separately. The AI plays by the same rules you do. It builds farms before it grows its army, attacks in waves, and fights the other AIs as readily as it fights you. Last castle standing wins.

What is in the game

Single-player, turn-based, no clock

Two maps: a 1v1 map and a four-player map against up to three AI opponents

Two resources: Wood and Food

Castle, Farm and Barracks, with castle upgrades to Level 3

Worker, Warrior, Scout, Soldier and Archer

A day and night cycle

Save and load mid-match, and Steam Achievements

The demo

The demo is a full match from start to finish with the core of the economy: a castle, farms, a barracks, workers, Soldiers and Archers, and Wood and Food. The full game is built on the same bones.

Made by one person

Crownfront is a solo project. What gets added after release depends on how it does. The ideas on my list include more maps, multiplayer, catapults and a deeper economy, but none of that is promised.