Stonehold

About

Stonehold starts with no hold at all. You are given the whole map — forest, stone and iron lying wherever they happened to fall, and four camps in the four corners — and nothing moves until you say where the keep goes. No clock is running while you decide: you can read the ground, look at how far the nearest iron is and how close the nearest camp is, and settle where you like. It is the one decision in the game that cannot be taken back. After that the hold is a keep with nobody in it and one free house to put down beside it: the first person moves in the moment that roof is up, walks out for the first timber of the game, and everything after it is yours. Houses bring people, workshops make ammunition, barracks send out soldiers, towers shoot, and walls decide which side of your hold has to be chewed through first. Every building can be upgraded, and every upgrade is built by the same people who build everything else. Nothing is built to gather. There are no lumber camps, quarries or mines — your people walk out to the forests, the stone and the iron themselves, work out which of the three the hold is shortest of, pick a patch nobody else is on and carry it home. Worked-out ground disappears and new ground turns up elsewhere on the map, so where the hold works keeps moving outwards. In the four corners sit four camps, each its own colour, each independent of the others and each playing the same game you are. They gather, they build huts and barracks, they upgrade their keep and they arm soldiers — and because they build no towers and no walls, everything they earn goes into the party they send at you. Each camp's keep also raises a champion of its own, who grows with the camp and carries a power the other corners do not — an archer, a ram, a warlord or a healer — so no two corners come at you the same way. Beat one party and the next comes back bigger, for ever: nothing caps a camp's level, its huts, its barracks or the size of what it sends, and when it marches it marches with every soldier it owns. The game has no win and no last level, only how long the hold stood and what it scored while it did. You watch all of it happen: their buildings, their workers and their waiting army are drawn on the map the whole time, the HUD carries a chip per camp that flashes when that camp has men on the road, and tapping a camp opens what it owns and what it is doing right now. They are not allies, either. None of the four ever goes looking for a rival — they all want the same hold — but nobody walks through anybody any more, so two parties that arrive from different corners at the same time run into each other and fight it out on your doorstep, and only what is left of them comes on. Where you settled is what decides whose road crosses whose. There is no money, because a hold has nothing to sell. It is built out of what it carries in: wood for the first of everything, stone from the second level on, iron for the biggest work and for arming an army — and the further out the material lies, the longer the walk to it. You never command anyone. You set one priority — build, gather or arm — and your people pick their own jobs out of it, including which material to fetch and which patch to fetch it from. A tower with no ammunition does not fire, so the hold is only as strong as the people willing to walk across it, and raiders who reach them will kill them. The hold is written down as you play, so a closed tab, a reload or a week away all pick up exactly where you left off — including a war party that was already on the road. Up to four people can hold at once. Stonehold's multiplayer is a race rather than a shared board: everyone in the room gets a map and a hold of their own and plays the same game side by side, and what the room is for is seeing whose hold stands longest. A roster along the edge carries everyone's score as it moves, a tap on any name looks in on that hold as it is right now, and a hold that falls does not end the room — you keep watching the others until the last keep goes down, and then the room shows how every hold stood. Multiplayer keeps no save, so a room is one sitting; a solo hold is still written down as you play. The game is played entirely on its public Game Hub page, so it opens full screen in its own tab and anyone with an Apps Hub account can play. The window inside mvmOS is only the launcher — and it will install Game Hub for you if it isn't there yet.

What it does

• Up to four holds in one room: everyone plays their own map, the roster shows every score as it moves, a tap looks in on anyone's hold, and the room ends when the last keep falls.
• A fallen hold keeps watching: you follow the holds still standing until the room is over, then see how every hold stood side by side.
• You choose where the hold stands: the game opens on an empty map with the time stopped, and the keep goes down where you decide — near the iron, far from a camp, or wherever the ground reads best.
• Four independent enemy camps, one per corner, each with its own colour, its own stores and its own keep level — they develop in parallel with you and never share anything.
• The corners are not allies: none of them ever marches at a rival, but two parties whose roads cross walk into each other instead of through each other, fight it out where they stand, and only the survivors reach you — so where you settle decides whose road crosses whose.
• The camps are played by the same rules you are: they gather, build, upgrade and arm soldiers. The one difference is that they build no towers and no walls — every raid is what they chose to spend it on.
• A champion per camp, raised by its keep and growing with it, each corner carrying a power the others do not — archer, ram, warlord or healer.
• Nothing has a ceiling — not their level, not their barracks, not your buildings. They grow for as long as they can pay, and a camp marches with its whole standing army, so there is no point at which the hold is safe: the only question is how long it lasts and how high it scored.
• You see them the whole game: their buildings, workers and waiting army are on the map, a HUD chip per camp shows its level and flashes when its party is on the road, and a tap on a camp opens everything it owns.
• Gathering with no buildings at all — your people walk to the forest, stone and iron themselves, judge what the hold is short of and pick their own patch.
• Ground that runs out and reappears elsewhere on a wide map, so the hold has to keep reaching further as it grows.
• Six buildings of your own — tower, house, workshop, barracks, wall and gate — plus the keep, every one of them upgradeable, and every upgrade built by your own people.
• Gates cut into wall you have already built, aimed like anything else you place: two squares out of a straight run or three round a corner, at the price of the wall they replace. A door is a weak point on purpose — it holds half the wall's integrity — but your own people still walk straight through it while a raider walks into it exactly as he walks into the wall it is set in. Brick it up and the wall it swallowed comes back for your people to raise again, free.
• Tap any person on the map, yours or theirs, for a panel of their own: how hurt they are, what they hit for or carry, what job they are doing, and — for one of theirs — which camp sent them.
• A barracks or a house shows who it is bringing out before it arrives: a row of figures filling in as arming a soldier or moving in a worker gets closer to done.
• Three materials and no money: wood builds the first of everything, stone comes in with the second level, and iron pays for the biggest work and for arming soldiers.
• Priorities instead of orders: pick build, gather or arm, and everyone on the map picks their own job out of it.
• Towers with a magazine that starts at a single round — they fire only while someone keeps carrying ammunition to them.
• Raiders carry what they came to take, and the stronger they are the more of it — kill one and the hold keeps it.
• Workers can be killed, buildings can be destroyed, and a tower you invested in can be taken from you.
• Built for a phone as much as a desktop: drag to pan at any zoom, pinch to zoom, a home button and camp chips to jump across the map, and building by tapping where it goes and confirming — the map is never covered while you place.
• Save and exit at any point, then pick the hold back up days later — marching war parties included.
• Played full screen in its own tab, in your own language and theme.

Integrations

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