The Collector's Estate

The estate of the late Aurelian Voss passes to whoever can open what he left behind.

Coming soon toApp StoreComing soon toGoogle Play

The estate

To whoever opens the house

Sir, — The estate of the late Aurelian Voss will pass to whoever can open what he left behind. We enclose no key. The door is not locked, and every clock in the house has stopped at the same hour.

Everything inside is worked by hand: drag, turn, slide, rub. Keep what you find in your pocket, and use it where it belongs.

Ashby

Solicitor to the estate

How it plays

Puzzles you work with your hands

Turn, press and pry

Cabinets turn in your hands, bosses press in order, seals crack.

Six rooms

Each about fifty steps deep, each opening the next.

A chapter for two

Two phones, two centuries, one mechanism.

Two endings

Let the hour go, or hold it.

Gameplay

See it played

Drag, turn and unlock interlocking mechanisms room by room. In the two-player chapters, each of you holds half the answer.

The key board

The rooms, in the order they open

IThe Entry HallThe cabinet, its upper works and inner chest, the clock, and the far wall.
IIThe StudyThe roll-top bureau, the presses, the pneumatic tube, the globe, the hearth.
IIIThe LibraryThe bookwheel, the chained ladder, the card catalogue, the map table.
IVThe WorkshopThe Answering Engine, built from bench parts and run. The forge, the bent key.
VThe ObservatoryThe dome, the orrery under glass, the telescope, the chart cabinet.
VIThe Sealed RoomThe Circle, the chair, and two endings.
A·BThe Clockmaker’s TwinsFor two: one phone in 1893, one in the attic now.

Players: 1, or 2 in the co-op chapter
Platform: Android, iPhone to follow
Co-op: Friends only, by private code
Purchases: None in the game

Co-op is friends-only, by private code. No ads, no in-app purchases.

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The snow shuts Thornmarch Pass, and the Far Lamp with it.

Coming soon toApp StoreComing soon toGoogle Play

The inn

Every night, someone is dead, robbed or gone

Most nights at the Far Lamp end with a guest dead, or robbed, or gone, and everyone who was under your roof is still under it. You keep the inn. You ask the questions.

By four o’clock you name who did it, to whom, how and why. Every case can be solved from what is in the house.

Every day

Night of the Day

One case, the same for every player. Keep a streak by naming the right person, night after night.

Any night

The Long Night

An endless winter, case after case, with quiet nights and thaws.

Four o’clock

The charge

Who, to whom, how and why, each scored on its own.

How it plays

Question, search, and name them

The guests

Thirty guests, each with a voice of their own. Ten minutes a question.

The rooms

Nine rooms and their storm nights. Five minutes a look.

The evidence

Show a guest what you found and watch them flinch.

The charge

Name who, to whom, how and why.

Gameplay

See it played

Question the guests, search the rooms and, by four o’clock, name who did it, to whom, how and why.

Tonight’s guests

Who is under your roof

A different houseful every night.

Modes: Night of the Day · The Long Night
Platform: Android first, iPhone to follow
Network: None. Plays offline.
Purchases: None in the game

No account, no ads, no in-app purchases. Plays offline.

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Hundred Field

A hundred cards, four arms, and one plain that has swallowed every army sent to it.

Coming soon toApp StoreComing soon toGoogle Play

The field

Every army sent to the Hundred Field is still on it

You raise a host from what the field has kept, a hoplite nine hundred years from home, a farmer who was told the war would not come this far, and you march.

Combat is one hard decision, repeated. You see what the enemy holds only as well as you scouted, and you see what your line will cost before you commit it.

Solo

The Long March

Ten battles, encampments and watchtowers, and a warlord at the end. One host carries its losses all the way.

1 vs 2–4

The Muster

Draft against rival commanders from one shared deck. What you take, they cannot.

How it plays

The wheel decides, the ground changes it

Ranged

Beats infantry. Slingers to longbowmen, and the Huns.

Infantry

Beats cavalry. Peasants to swordsmen, and the Spartans.

Cavalry

Beats artillery. Scouts to knights, and the war elephants.

Artillery

Beats ranged. Ballistae to trebuchets, and the Helepolis.

Six banners

March under a banner, or none

The Skarnfell

Highlanders who came too late for their own war

Bowmen gain 100 in the thicket

The Cassari

What is left of an older order

Artillery ignores terrain

The River Clans

Crossing water before there were bridges

The ford costs your engines nothing

The Marches

Exiles nobody remembers sending

Giving ground costs a third, not half

The Iron Concord

A professional army that never got word

Lines of three or more gain 100

The Barrow-kin

They were never an army

May recruit the special units

Modes: The Long March (solo) · The Muster (1 vs 2–4 AI)
Platform: Android and iPhone
Network: None. Plays offline.
Purchases: None in the game

No account, no ads, no in-app purchases. Plays offline.

← NorthVane GamesIn development

Korea, 1592. You land with the Japanese invasion as a swordsmith’s son with a spear. Six years of war will ask which shore you really fight for.

Read the story See the map

The story

One soldier, two shores, six years of real history

Jinnosuke is nineteen, conscripted into Katō Kiyomasa’s division, and better with a forge than a spear. The war is real: Busan, Hanseong, Jinju, Ulsan, Noryang. He can’t change it. He can decide who he is inside it.

Stay loyal to your lord, or follow the commander who crossed over to Joseon. Every road holds a story that pulls you off it.

Act I · May 1592

The landing

Busan falls in a day. The road north runs through villages that never wanted this war.

Act II · 1592–1593

The break

An order you can’t obey and keep yourself. Stay, or cross to the other shore.

Act V · 1598

Ulsan

Old comrades on opposite sides of one wall, in the snow.

How it plays

A Kingdom Come–style RPG for PC

Choose your shore

Small choices add up until one forces your hand: stay loyal, or defect to Joseon.

Forge your steel

Gather iron sand and charcoal, fold and temper blades, and earn the teachers who know how.

Lose the road

Side stories open inside side stories. You set out for Hanseong and end up hunting a potter’s son.

Walk real history

Every main event is a real battle on its real date, from Busan to Noryang.

Map of Korea, 1592 to 1598, with the invasion routes and battles

The map

Busan to Pyongyang in two months

The invasion landed on 24 May 1592 and took Hanseong nineteen days later. Your division marches the eastern road through Ulsan and Gyeongju. The battles in red are the ones the story passes through.

People you’ll meet

Who you march with, and who you meet

SayakaThe commander who crossed over

Seo-yeonA herbalist’s daughter near Gyeongju

Setting: The Imjin War, 1592–1598
Platform: PC
Status: In development

Two Shores is in development for PC.

← NorthVane GamesIn development

Lead one of India’s great kingdoms, from the ancient realms to the Sultanates. Win by the sword, by trade, or by the splendour of your court.

The kingdoms How it plays

The game

A real-time strategy game of India’s kingdoms

Every kingdom shares the same armies, but none of them fights the same way. One rides elephants into the line, one rules the southern sea, one holds the passes with archers.

Gather grain, timber and gold, raise temples and harbours, and build a court that other kings envy. A peaceful player can win without taking a single fort.

Victory

By conquest

Break the other thrones and hold their capitals.

Victory

By trade

Make your ports and markets the richest on the map.

Victory

By prestige

Raise a great monument and a court worthy of a chakravartin.

How it plays

Build, gather and command

Twelve kingdoms

Each with its own strengths, techs and way of war.

War elephants

The heaviest arm on any field, and the hardest to stop.

Cities that grow

Farms, harbours, markets and temples, all in real time.

No gunpowder

Elephants, bows, chariots and steel.

The banners

Twelve kingdoms take the field

Choose a kingdom and its ruler, from the naval empire of the Cholas in the south to the Sultanates in the north.

Rulers

Choose your throne

Genre: Real-time strategy
Platform: PC
Status: In development

Elephant Throne is in development for PC.

← NorthVane GamesIn development

Hollinthwaite, spring 1907. The lead mine is closing, the Provision Company wants the lease, and old Pickersgill’s shop is yours. Keep the village fed, warm and working until the summer of 1914.

Read the story See the village

The story

Eight years to keep a village on its feet

You take on the General Stores the month the mine shuts. The men who dug lead now need work, the families need credit, and a chain company from Leeds is offering good money for your lease. Every price you set is a choice about who can afford to stay.

Farm the smallholding, work the old mine for lead and coal, make and mend, and sell it all over your own counter. The village keeps a ledger of what you do. So does the Michaelmas reckoning, every year until the agricultural show of August 1914.

Spring 1907

The lease

Pickersgill’s shop, a pasture and a spade. Jos Metcalfe, late of the mine, is looking for a strong back’s worth of work.

Michaelmas

The reckoning

Once a year the village adds up: who has work, who has coal, who had to leave. Six pillars, no mid-game failure, three endings.

August 1914

The show

Hollinthwaite’s agricultural show. Whether the high street is still a high street is the measure of what you did.

How it plays

A village shop, a smallholding and a lead mine, for PC

Keep the shop

Stock the shelves, set fair prices, give credit when you must. The counter is where the village meets.

Work the land

Dig, sow and lift on the beds behind the shop, and buy more beds as the years go on.

Go back down

The mine is shut, not empty. Lead for roofs, coal for grates, and the men who know the workings.

The village remembers

Answer in coin: a shilling or a penny. What you say goes in the ledger, and the ledger decides the ending.

Talking, without voices

Folk are saying you’ll sell the lease to that Provision Company afore the year’s out.

1/-I mean to keep it open.1dI haven’t decided yet.

Jos will remember that.

Hollinthwaite from the fell: the high street, the smallholding and the beck — Hollinthwaite from the fell

Map of Hollinthwaite: the high street with the General Stores, the Lowther Arms and the chapel, the smallholding below, the old lead mine on the fell above

The village

Hollinthwaite, North Riding

Drawn as the estate agent drew it for the sale of the lease. About thirty households on one street under the fell. The shop sits in the middle, with the Lowther Arms and the chapel beside it, your beds and barn behind, and the track to the old lead mine climbing from the pub. Everyone you serve lives within a mile of your counter.

People you’ll meet

Who comes to the counter

Mrs PickersgillThe old shopkeeper’s widow

Setting: Hollinthwaite, the Yorkshire Dales, 1907–1914
Platform: PC
Status: In development

Shillings and Pence is in development for PC.

Games worth finding your way back to.

Out now