SALTCROWN

eighteen courses · one stone · no second tower

The sea has been rising for four generations. There is one granite pillar left standing above it, and everyone who is still alive is on it. You are the harbourmaster. You raise the city up the side of that stone, course by course, while the water climbs behind you.

Growth is not the game. Triage is. Every course costs stone, hands and seasons of labour, and a course you raised twenty years ago will go under. Long before the tide reaches it you have to decide: carry its stores and its people up, abandon it with everything still on it, or scuttle it as a breakwater and buy back a little waterline at the cost of all of it.

The run ends when the water crests the crown, or when the last soul goes into the sea. Your score is what you carried above the water and who was still standing on the stone.

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How to play

Everything happens through the harbourmaster's ledger at the bottom of the screen. You never click the tower itself.

• WORKS — the six kinds of course you can raise, each with its price in stone, hands and seasons. Click one to begin it. Work takes seasons, and the tide does not wait for it.
• TIDE TABLE — every course you have raised, what stands on it, and how many seasons it has left before the water arrives.
• TRIAGE — the three choices for a course the water is coming for: Carry up, Abandon, Give to the sea.
• Tide staff, down the left edge — a cutaway elevation of the whole tower with the waterline drawn across it. It is the fastest read of how much stone you still have above water.
• Esc — halt the work and resume it.

The six courses

Cistern	Catches rain. Waters only the courses beneath it.
Granary	Holds food. Spoils if it sits directly above a kiln.
Workshop	Cuts new stone out of the pillar. Hands must live within three courses of it.
Dormitory	Beds. Too far from work and people drift away.
Shrine	Softens every loss from the moment it stands.
Kiln	Burns mortar; every course above it rises faster.

Where you put them matters as much as how many you raise.

The first thing that will kill you

The landing store at the foot of the tower feeds everyone at the start, and it goes under early. Food and water are what run out first, not stone — and a granary that drowns takes its sacks with it. Plan the next one before you need it.

Worth seeing

• The opening, before you lay anything: the bare pillar in an overcast North Sea, rain crossing it, gulls, one boat still working the water.
• The waterline on the stone — wet granite, salt bloom, and a foam collar where the tower pierces the surface.
• A course going under. The camera leaves the ledger and holds on it.
• What the tower looks like once you have given its bottom courses to the sea: a city standing on timber legs above open water.
• The reckoning at the end — a stamped page of accounts, and a plate of the whole elevation with everything you lost drawn under the line.