Home By The River
Home By The River is a builder game set in a dystopian not too distant future. You move to a polluted land by a river so that you may build your clean reactor secretly, and hide from the mighty Sigil Corporation. Construct your home & lab, farm, harvest, cook, earn money, gain virtue, clean pollution, get your technology out to the world, and so transform your dystopian world forever by your efforts. Enlist Pioneers of various professions to help you in your cause! You can play single player or LAN co-op.
A more advanced player can finish all of the main game objectives in about four hours play time and after that the game becomes a house building sandbox. All systems in the game have been purposefully made swift so there is no tedious grinding. No planting one by one, harvesting one by one, placing things one by one, or being limited in how much can be achieved in one day.
CLEAN POLLUTION
- Cut down dead trees.
- Remove trash.
- Plant new trees.
- Place solar panels.
- Establish wind farms.
- When you’re filthy rich, build your clean reactor.
CREATE YOUR HOME
Build your dream home, and feel free to share what you’ve made with the Discord community. As you level up you’ll gain more tiles that can be unlocked and placed in the world and evenutally you can build your lab as well. I’ve designed the tools for construction to be easy to use:
- Right click acts like a colour picker and can also swap to the Axe tool for quick harvesting.
- Alpha numeric keys allow you to quickly select a mode; delete, build, interact, inventory, foreground, props.
- You can left click drag build and delete for fast construction and deletion.
- Holding down left shift while constructing will immediately build a solid wall which is great for building faster and setting up defense walls against the Sigil drones.
FARM AND HARVEST
- Plant corn, wheat, sugar, and trees.
- Sell the harvested crop or you can process them further for use in cooking.
- Let some trees grow to help reduce pollution and harvest some to sell their lumber. Do sustainable forestry.
YOUR STATS
- Hunger – you can’t do anything if you’re hungry so eat food.
- Energy – you can’t do anything if you’re tired, so get rest.
- Spirit – you can’t do anything if you’re depressed, so meditate.
- Hidden – your world will be demolished if you get found out so do keep away from the drones and destroy them.
- Experience – gain XP, level up so you get more tile types to build and more neat stuff to do.
- Virtue – defines how people react to you and your end game experience.
EARN INCOME
- Sell harvested crops to rivermen, or better, through a trading terminal when you’re higher level.
- Collect sky nodes and get money, XP, and spirit.
- Make computer games, if you make a legendary one you will make tons of cash.
- Establish ventures in the background and let the passive income roll in.
- Build solar panels. Yes, you’ll get income from your solar farm.
- Bail out businesses that are close to default. They’ll take you on as a shareholder and give you dividends!
AND MUCH MORE
- Establish your underground lab, gain research points, unlock research cards and create clean reactor components that you’ll donate to the world.
- Stop Sigil drone swarms from demolishing what you have built and upgrade your lightning rod to fight back!
- Enlist pioneers who will help you achieve your objectives. Harvester pioneers will remove trash, cut down dead trees and harvest mature crops for you.
- Feed your super cat, change its colours, or give it a hat.
- Play single player or over LAN. Harvested resources are duplicated across the network so everyone benefits. Also you can place a chest in the world to share items or just store it in that world!
- Upgrade your hoverboard and fly!
- And more for you to experience.
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN GAME DEV?
If you’re interested in developing your own games then you may be interested in my Gamer To Game Developer Series 2. It is the foundation for Home By The River and you’ll see how to make your own 2D world that players can build using the Unity game engine. If you want to make an open world survival craft type of game with world building like Terraria then I do recommend using Unity engine over GameMaker and RPG Maker and Godot because of Unity’s powerful 2D tools and superb tilemap system.
another game of mine you might be interested in
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Game Discussion
Steam User 20
I am really enjoying this game. It's a very chill game and I enjoy building my home. Granted, I haven't come face to face with any enemies yet, but the first 7 days are pretty great. I do have a few suggestions for improvements, but they aren't deal breakers by any means.
- Settings for the size of the operating panels would be great. the one that tells us our stats is way too big and while it fades when not using it, if your mouse moves over it unless its pinned back, it pops back up. I would prefer a smaller, static box in the upper right corner.
- Hover descriptions would be amazing. When i'm in the shop, I have to unpin the status panel to see the chat where all the descriptions are scrolling. and also on that note if you move your mouse too fast, the description scrolls down so you can't see it for long.
- I hate the chat box. LOATHE it. I place solo and that box is just big and in the way. other than descriptions scrolling in it, I would love for an option to get rid of it.
- player sleeping. in chat box, it just keeps saying player is sleeping over and over while the player is in bed. I don't think even saying it once is necessary. when the player is laying in bed, its pretty obvious the player is sleeping.
As I said, all minor suggestions. All in all, I really love this game. I'm sure since its so new, that there will be polish added and will make the player experience even better.
Steam User 11
A cozy feel-good game to play through the weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed transforming the landscape and building a sci-fi modern home. The developer seems quite active on the forums so if you have any issues it should be sorted quickly. :)
(If you want a more challenging experience, don't open the gifts that you're given while playing!)
Steam User 7
Oh, this game? This here is a surprisingly charming little project. It's a pretty cozy game: a bit of a mix of 2D farming sim and base builder, and it rolls with the concept pretty well.
The art-style is a bit amateur, but it has a bright palette, and the simplicity of the graphics fits the nature of this game (and the sprite-work is still better than anything I've drawn recently, lol).
Honestly, the environmental "hope-punk" theme was what sold me; being able to transform a withered, polluted land into a thriving green paradise? And I can purge a corrupt megacorp at the same time? Sign me right up!
My overall rating? 80/100. This is clearly someone's passion project, and I wanna see it succeed!
Steam User 6
It's a nice game, that's not overpriced. If you are okay with it being roughly 5 hours long to finish, then I recommend it.
Steam User 5
Genuinely cute game! I felt a little overwhelmed during the tutorial but luckily the grace period of learning before challenge comes is long enough that I was able to search through the menus and have a good handle on controls before any real challenge came along! Highly recommend!
Steam User 1
It is an average game, I finished my first map in 4 hours. Seeing it's an independent developer I think it's good. The mechanics (though with its problems, see below) are interesting and the objectives guide the game pretty well. Music is beautiful.
There are some problems, the mechanics don't level up with you, I had to keep doing the same trades even at the end of the game to get the money necessary to keep advancing. I would have hoped that there was some kind of automatisation for that.
I'm never too focused on personalisation of graphics (color of clothes,etc.) so that part of game doesn't add anything for me.
Steam User 6
Review at:
This is a super fun game and I am eagerly wondering how far I can take this game. I love the concept of the game and the graphics I feel suit this type of game. I feel like the tutorial is a little too technical, but once you get past that the game will be super fun. The game is unique as there are not many games that involve saving the environment.