Ostriv: peaceful 18th-century farming simulator

October 28, 2023 10:50 PM

"Ostriv is a city-building game that puts you in a role of a governor of an 18th century town to challenge your creative skills and management abilities."

It's not finished-- in part because the main developer lives in a war zone-- but there's an active following that's generated awiki, a subreddit, and some reviews. Every detail of the game is based on a real historical data, with more to come.

My review: It's delightful if you like micromanaging tiny villagers (and I do!) It's peaceful in that there are no enemies besides hunger and want. Run it fast to keep it moving-- or run it in real time if you just want to enjoy the sunshine, ambient sounds of work, wind, and birdsong, and tinkly folk background music. It's tricky enough to be satisfying even though there is currently no "win" condition besides what you've decided is enough. I'm going to make a village of 1,000 people and then let it run for a while to see how they do on their own. Shoutout to this thread for inspiring me to try it!

posted by blnkfrnk (22 comments total)

The name means "Island"
posted by I-Write-Essays at 5:31 AM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

How does it compare to Banished? Loved that one and wish it had been developed more. Seems like a lot of games like it now are trying to do that relaxation angle of nature alongside management which is VERY much my vibe.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:24 AM on October 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Ok wait there are cats and dogs I'm gonna need this one
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:26 AM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

I haven't played a game like this since SimCity 2000. I don't expect a tutorial since it's in alpha, but is there any documentation, or tips for a newb like me? Or should I just keep poking at it?
posted by rikschell at 8:47 AM on October 29, 2023

Mod note: One comment removed - please at least look at the link before asking questions about how it deals with social issues.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:47 AM on October 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

> is there any documentation

Rikschell, I suggest taking a look at the wiki linked in the post. It's unfortunately on Fandom, but still quite a useful resource. It also links to their discord
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:06 AM on October 29, 2023

Here's the same wiki on Antifandom!
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 9:21 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

It looks like cats & dogs are on the roadmap, but may not be playable yet.

Looking at online tips, players are required to build a church in order to grow the city. I wonder whether the dev would be willing to provide options to build shtetls instead.
posted by cheshyre at 9:41 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wasn't even thinking a cat or dog would be playable...existing alongside would be fine with me! More virtual cats, haha!
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:38 AM on October 29, 2023

Looking at online tips, players are required to build a church in order to grow the city. I wonder whether the dev would be willing to provide options to build shtetls instead.

Erm, did you mean "shuls"?
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:57 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

A wiki isn't really what I was hoping for. Is the point that I have to play it 50 times to figure out what order to build things in? I thought it seemed like a farm would be useful, but you can't plant anything until the second year? The houses are really important to keep enough workers, and in order to build enough you need Forestry, a Thatchery, and Clay. If you build too many houses, you need a market and food to sell, but is the answer really to try and figure it out from the wiki? I'm a little lost without a starter guide.
posted by rikschell at 11:30 AM on October 29, 2023

Shuls would definitely be part of it, but I realized that a shtetl mod would need more changes than that.

Villager names are autogenerated, so swap out the more Christian personal names. Make sure the village can be sustainable without pig-farming. I don't know how time flows in the game whether Shabbos-observance would be relevant.
posted by cheshyre at 11:35 AM on October 29, 2023

@rikschell, I wonder if someone on the reddit has a starters guide (or could outline the basics).

I saw a thread that suggested running out of nails was a common problem; you need to build a trading post early to make sure you can get iron for nail making, otherwise you stall completely. And the linked review mentioned building a fishing boat just before the river froze over, at the same time everyone without a house just decamped to seek better fortune for cold weather.

Definitely feels like a game that'll take some effort to get humming.
posted by mark k at 12:41 PM on October 29, 2023

Bought it this morning based on this rec, have been playing it all day (oops!), it's very good and exactly my jam.
posted by Rhedyn at 12:41 PM on October 29, 2023

Start up: it's very challenging! The order is Forestry, Clay Pit, Thatchery, 9 houses with gardens, Smithy (for nails), Carpentry (to fix carts for hauling), Farm, handful of market stalls. If it all goes exactly right you can plant in the first spring, which you need because you only have like one winter of food. Then build a trading post and more houses and on and on.
There are tricky things to learn about the individual supply chains and seasonal hiring (ex. All hands on deck at the farm for sowing and harvest, but only a couple the rest of the time) and knowing to stock an animal building BEFORE animals arrive, and so on. The wiki and other fan-created materials are super helpful because not all of this is obvious at this time. Like, I kept killing my chickens because I didn't set up the food rations right in a sub menu, so thr workers were just showing up, hauling water, and standing around.

I would also like to see more variation like a day-night cycle, food variety (the villagers do their own gardening, you'd think they would also forage and hunt), apiaries, and more daily life (like kids have the status "playing around" but aren't visibly playing) but this will come in time, presumably.
posted by blnkfrnk at 1:08 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also, you'd need a day-night cycle for Shabbos observance. I was a little disappointed that the churches don't do anything. I was hoping at least for little priests wandering around, or holiday processions. Right now there is, at least, a loophole where you can use churches as storage.
posted by blnkfrnk at 1:11 PM on October 29, 2023

If the default (Christian) version doesn't support a daily/weekly cycle, I'd be fine with the same level of "observance" in my hypothetical Jewish mod of the game.
posted by cheshyre at 1:37 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Basic observance right now is that individual villagers randomly go in and out of the church for short periods of time, but it doesn't seem to make a difference for what else you do.

It would take very few modifications to run a Jewish village with the game as-is in terms of mechanics. I think it would be neat if it were either a customization you could have, or if it were randomized with some of the other random factors like number of starting villagers and the garden produce they choose to plant.
posted by blnkfrnk at 7:39 PM on October 30, 2023

Blnkfrnk, I can’t get 9 houses (much less with gardens) built before winter, even if I put everything very close together and keep hiring an extra construction worker by understaffing the Forestry when they get ahead of demand. Any tips?
posted by rikschell at 9:09 AM on November 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure. Are you fully staffing the forestry? You can only put 2 guys on the forestry while all the other men do construction. Only later can you fully staff it.

Only let women work at the thatchery. Since the game only lets men do construction and forestry, you have to make sure all the men are allocated to that and the women do everything else.

Also...sometimes a family leaves anyway because you can only build 8 houses. Someone else will move to your village as soon as a house is built.
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:04 PM on November 1, 2023

Also it occurred to me this morning-- the number of people in your starting position is variable, in the low 20's to low 30's, and so is the exact start date of winter. If you get a low number of people AND an early winter, that can mess you up. You can start over infinite times though. Other than that, it's just making sure men are allocated to what the game regards as men's jobs and focusing on only building houses and infrastructure related to houses until you get at least 9. You do wind up building housing pretty much constantly to grow the village and get more workers for other industries, it's very Winchester Mystery House in that regard, unending building.

Even after several attempts I still mess it up. I recently accidentally set my market stalls to 0 workers globally, and then it took several people moving out because there was no food that they could buy, because nobody was running the markets, for me to figure it out. There are a LOT of ways to make mistakes so...you know, be easy on yourself, it's a game.
posted by blnkfrnk at 1:21 PM on November 2, 2023

Thanks for the tips, it does seem pretty unforgiving and easy to get into a failure mode where you can't progress (very unlike the old sim city games). And figuring out the boundaries of those failure modes seems to be the point of the game, rather than getting to be creative and try building various things in various ways that give feedback but don't leave you stuck. So maybe this game isn't for me. But I'll stick with it a while longer and create more save points. I did finally get nine houses built by placing everything very close together and trying to have max construction workers as much as possible and understaffing the forestry except when absolutely necessary. That should leave me with enough workers to finish the smithy and the farm and get a trading post built and if I can figure out how the farm works maybe i can get to the second winter without everyone abandoning the village. It's much more of a white knuckle game than I expected.
posted by rikschell at 5:56 PM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]