You don't command your people. You govern them.

Valdrin is a low-fantasy kingdom sim where you never control a single subject directly. You set the rules, priorities, and conditions they live under, then your people act on their own judgment, needs, and beliefs, shaping the settlement through thousands of small choices you can influence but never dictate.

Sent by a the crown to tame an untapped frontier, you build industries, trade with the homeland, and grow a foothold into a living society. But every subject has a name, a family, a faith, and a breaking point. Every decision, taxes, policies, religion, military force, reshapes your growing society, influencing how people live, worship, and fight for their beliefs.

Prosperity and collapse are both one bad decree away.

Govern a living society

• Indirect control - Issue policies and orders; let subjects act on their own needs and judgment. You steer the system, not the hands.

• Emergent lives - Subjects are born, pair into households, pass down surnames, work, worship, grow old, and die. You'll remember them by name.

• Social fractures - Prejudice, racial tension, and unequal treatment shape how communities form, clash, and endure. Demographics harden into classes, factions, and rivalries.

• Faith and ideology - Competing religions spread through incentive and belief, each with unique bonuses. Send missionaries, convert regions, or let heresy take root.

Build an economy that fights back

• Dynamic markets - Supply, demand, and prices shift on their own as your colony produces, consumes, and trades. Boom and shortage are emergent, not scripted.

• Quality and trade - Goods carry quality; craftsmen, merchants, and caravans move it across the map and back to the homeland.

• Death and taxes - A world driven by wages, hard economic tradeoffs, and the ever-tightening grip of royal bureaucracy.

Defend your realm

• Raise retinues - Recruit soldiers and archers, drill formations, and answer raids from factions who despise you.

• Adventurers and quests - Support wandering heroes, fund expeditions, and prepare for conquest.

• Justice and dissent - Imprison, exile, or execute outlaws and traitors, and live with its consequences.

A different kind of strategy game

Fans of RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, Frostpunk, and Manor Lords will feel at home, but Valdrin pulls you one step back. You don't play the people.

You play the system that governs them.

Valdrin is in active development. Wishlist and follow to shape the frontier as it grows.