How a settlement becomes a civilization

A settlement starts with a place to live. In Stone to Stars, you choose a continent with its own landscape, climate, resources and neighbours. Your people explore unfamiliar land, find food and raw materials, and reveal the map. These discoveries inform where you settle and how you expand.

The first campfire and shelters grow into homes, workshops, storehouses, fields and roads. Each new building becomes part of a wider economy. You decide who gathers materials, who processes them and how the results reach the people who need them.

That economy follows physical goods. A hide must be brought back from a hunt and processed before it can become clothing; a tool needs materials, a craftsperson and a way to reach its user. Gathering, production, transport and storage all need people. Building a larger settlement also means organising the work that keeps it supplied.

Research changes what that work can achieve. A branching technology tree opens up new materials, crafts and buildings. Choosing a direction for research shapes the possibilities available to your settlement as it moves beyond its first stone tools and into new eras.

Growth also depends on people. Your own community has needs, and its support depends on trust in your decisions. Neighbouring settlements develop independently and pursue their own goals. Trade and cooperation can connect your societies; conflicts can turn those same neighbours into opponents. Across generations, preparing successors becomes part of preserving what you have built.

The final trial brings these systems together. Knowledge, supplies, production chains and relationships with neighbours all matter to the future of your people. We are keeping the nature of that challenge a mystery. Stone to Stars is in development; you can follow the project and add it to your Steam wishlist.