Salt and Soil: A Frontier Family Sim

ONE HOMESTEAD. ONE FAMILY. THREE CENTURIES.

Build a homestead. Keep a family together. Leave them something worth inheriting.

Salt and Soil is a minimalist, old-school roguelite colony sim about one family on the changing American frontier, 1609–1900. Farm, raise livestock, build workshops, trade, stretch scarce supplies and labor—and face the consequences when relatives refuse to follow the plan.

This is not one hero's story. It is the story of a family that survives, changes, and leaves a mark across generations.

250 YEARS SINCE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Salt and Soil is being created to mark the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 2026. The anniversary is a reason to look beyond a single date—to the generations of work, survival, conflict, displacement, ambition, and compromise that shaped the country before and after 1776.

History is often told through presidents, wars, and borders. Salt and Soil asks what it felt like for one ordinary household to live beneath them.

EVERY YEAR ENDS WITH A FAMILY COUNCIL

At year's end, the family gathers around the table. The council is built from what actually happened in your campaign: hunger or surplus, debt or growth, births, deaths, marriages, quarrels, alliances, threats, and hard-won victories.

Those events become personal dilemmas, grudges, and turning points. Your decisions shape who inherits the ranch, what the family remembers, and what kind of people they are becoming.

BUILD A RANCH THAT CAN OUTLIVE YOU

Every year is a planning problem with human consequences. Balance food, wood, metal, money, tools, goods, livestock, housing, buildings, and labor. Decide what to build, what to produce, where to trade, and when growth is worth the risk.

A good year expands the ranch. A bad one demands sacrifices the family may remember for decades—livestock sold, plans abandoned, a child sent away to work.

YOUR FAMILY CREATES THE STORY

Family members are more than workers. They have traits, moods, relationships, ambitions, and grudges. They marry, age, compete, help, disappoint, leave, and die. When the head of the family is gone, the next generation takes over—with the skills, debts, rivalries, and reputation you left behind.

There is no scripted dynasty waiting for you. Each playthrough becomes its own family chronicle because your people make mistakes, change, and pass consequences forward.

HISTORY REACHES YOUR HOME

The wider world does not stop at the edge of your land. Resource shortages, migration, shifting borders, new settlements, market swings, local conflicts, and new dangers all reach your fields and your table.

The map changes. The neighbors change. Your family must adapt—or pay the price for standing still.

TRADE, RELATIONS, AND CONFLICT

You share the frontier with Indigenous nations, neighboring settlements, traders, migrants, and bandit camps. Build relationships through trade and cooperation, ease tension through diplomacy, or face conflict when survival and ambition leave no clean way out.

Every choice can affect your safety, resources, reputation, and the family's long-term future.

FEATURES

• Replayable roguelite colony sim on the American frontier, 1609–1900

• Guide one family through survival, growth, conflict, loss, and legacy

• Turn a fragile homestead into a productive farm and a sturdy ranch

• Manage food, materials, money, tools, goods, livestock, buildings, housing, and labor

• Create a living family chronicle of traits, moods, marriages, rivalries, births, deaths, and ambitions

• Face annual Family Councils built from the exact context of your campaign

• Trade, cooperate, negotiate, and clash with Indigenous nations and frontier communities

• Adapt as the map, economy, neighbors, threats, and opportunities change around you

• Begin a new family story in every playthrough

WHAT WILL YOUR FAMILY LEAVE BEHIND?

Wishlist Salt and Soil and follow its development. A new family chronicle begins with every playthrough.