A Norse settlement builder set in 1025
Three ships set sail.
Forty-one saw the morning.
A settlement builder with roads, carriers and long production chains. A saga records what you build.
“Because the road between field and storehouse was missing, the grain rotted in the field.”
How Vinmark plays
You build the network. The saga keeps the record.
Every plank, every fish, every sack of grain travels on the backs of your carriers along the roads you lay. When a road is missing, goods pile up, and you see it on the road. The narrator records what worked and what failed. Your settlement becomes a saga of its own.
Roads and carriers
You draw roads from building to building. Each stretch gets its own carrier.
The saga
The narrator pauses the game and tells the story, in more than 180 written passages.
Winter
Fresh food spoils in the frost. Firewood, smoked stores and wool carry you through.
I · The Jetty
One Last Wave
A grey morning in late autumn, a fjord in Iceland. Families embrace those who leave and tie the children's scarves tighter.
Three ships, one hundred and twenty people, a land in the west. The voyage starts too late in the year, and everyone knows it.
II · Rán
The Sea Takes Its Share
Days later the wind turns. Rán reaches for the ships, and her daughters toss them from wave to wave.
One wave lifts the Hearthflame sideways, a second pushes her over.
III · Hérvík
A Foreign Shore
Forty-one see the morning. Keel in the sand, forest down to the water. You have tools, a few sacks of grain and each other.
At the edge of the trees stands a stone. Someone raised it, and not long ago.
Who came here before you?
The West
Beyond the Mist
The land runs further than you think. Rivers, hills, ice. Every trace you find points deeper in. Where it leads, you learn on the way.
The Norns keep spinning. Read the signs.
Production chains
From log to coin
More than 40 buildings and over 25 goods mesh together. Every chain depends on the next: the smelter needs charcoal, the mine needs bread, and winter needs everything at once. You do not plan single houses. You plan roads that a whole people lives on.
Timber
Woodcutter → Log → Saw pit → Plank
Log → Charcoal burner → Charcoal
The forester replants what the axe takes. Planks carry every building, charcoal feeds smelter and smithy.
Stone and ore
Quarry → Stone
Ore mine → Iron ore → Smelter → Iron → Toolsmith → Tools
Mines sit on deposits in the rock and need food for their workers. Without tools, no workshop grows past its first years.
Fish and hunt
Fisher → Fish → Smokehouse → Smoked fish
Hunter → Meat → Smokehouse → Smoked meat
Fresh does not last. Smoked, it lasts through winter and down into the mines.
Grain and bread
Barley field → Barley → Hand quern → Flour → Bakery → Flatbread
The seed you brought covers a small field. Eat it, and there is nothing to sow in spring.
Wool and furs
Sheep farm → Wool → Weaver → Winter clothing
Hunter → Hide → Tannery → Fur
At the start of winter everyone needs warm clothing. Those who freeze carry slower.
What the land gives
Gatherer's hut → Berries → Drying rack → Dried berries
Root field → Tubers → Root cellar
New plants, new harvests, each in its season. A mixed winter store keeps your people healthy.
Warmth
Woodcutter → Firewood → House
Coal mine → Coal
In winter every house keeps a fire. That wood is then missing from your building sites.
Gold and coins
Gold mine → Gold ore → Mint → Coin
At the end of the long chains lies gold. What the coins do, you will find out in the game.
Real history
Around the year 1025
Around the year 1000, people from Iceland and Greenland sailed west. The Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red tell of it. At L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, archaeologists found their houses. Wood from the site carries the marks of iron tools, and its tree rings date that work to the year 1021.
Vinmark begins four years later. The ships are knarrs, not longships. Houses carry turf roofs, clothing comes from the warp-weighted loom, bread from the hand quern. The gods are Odin, Njörd and Rán.
The journey itself is invented. Where history falls silent, the saga carries on.
Real land
Built from real elevation data
Every map starts with survey data. Elevations come from official North American terrain models on a 30-metre grid. Coasts, hills, valleys and rivers follow the real landscape.
On top we lay the land as it was around the year 1000: forest, heath, marsh and rock, without the roads, towns and dams of the present day. Where rock breaks the surface, ore and stone wait. Where the river runs shallow, there is a ford.
You do not build on an invented map. You build where people came ashore a thousand years ago.
Elevation data: MRDEM-30, Natural Resources Canada. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. U.S. Geological Survey, 3D Elevation Program (public domain).
What awaits
A Land That Tests You
A Voice
A narrator walks beside you. When the saga moves on, the world holds its breath and you listen.
Hard Winters
Linen in summer, wool in winter. You stock food and firewood long before the first snow.
You Are Not Alone
This land has its people. They know it far better than you. Meet them with respect.
“Odin gives nothing for free. Whoever wants the path must seek it.”
Follow the saga
Raven post
Once a month the ravens bring news from the workshop: artwork, buildings, the Kickstarter launch day. No spam, never shared.
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In development
The West Is Waiting
Vinmark Westwärts is coming to Mac and Windows. Soon we launch on Kickstarter to finish the game. Get notified and add it to your Steam wishlist.