Stick Life: Ye Olde Grind

You start out on a straw pallet in the Serf Shack with twenty-five gold and no plan. Where it goes from there is up to you. Maybe you become the best weaver in Emberwater. Maybe you raise a dragon behind your cottage, buy the castle, or lose everything at dice in a cellar. All of it is on the table.

Days go by fast. Each one is twenty real minutes, the shops keep their own hours, rent still comes due, and fifty townsfolk get on with their lives whether you show up or not. If midnight catches you away from a bed, you'll wake up in the infirmary with a bill waiting for you.

This is the heart of the game. The kingdom has twelve guilds, and every one of them has a workshop you can actually work in. Your little stick figure gets right in there at the loom or the anvil, finished pieces fly off the bench into your bag, and the longer you keep at it the faster they come.

A taste of what you can make:
Homespun from your own sheep's fleece, all the way up to scarlet broadcloth and a Unicorn Tapestry

Small ale, mead and saffron mead

Arrows, longbows, beeswax candles, carved chairs and a yew marriage chest

Hand-copied books from a hornbook to a Royal Charter, and silver worked into a Chain of Office

Gargoyles carved from stone you cut yourself at the quarry

A sword hammered out of armour you took off someone you beat in a fight

Saddles, healing potions, and a roast Peacock in His Pride

That's well over 130 things to make. Every trade has a couple of buyers around town, and some of them pay better on certain days, so it's worth shopping your goods around.

Buy a little farm in Oakhollow and a strip of land comes with it: twenty garden beds and twenty-six crops, from turnips and leeks to saffron and mandrake. Most of what you grow goes straight back into the workshops. Herbs end up in potions, dye plants go to the weavers, and hops go to the brewers.

Then there's the yard. Start with a pair of doves and a hen, work up to cows and oxen, and eventually you can keep a griffin, a unicorn or a dragon out back. Your animals fill the chest by the gate every few days, and none of them die if you forget about them for a week.

If you'd rather climb a ladder, every guild has five ranks, from Bobbin-Winder all the way up to Draper to the Crown. Getting in takes a quick interview with the guild master, three questions on the spot, and you can belong to as many guilds as you like.

The big prize is the Merchants' Guildhall. Make it to the top chair there and you can buy the whole charter.

All fifty people in the kingdom have names, jobs, homes and routines of their own. Talk to them enough and they'll warm up to you. Or they won't. They notice things, too: the fight you started last week, the nice cloak you just bought, the manor you moved into. Make friends, fall for someone, move in together, get married.

Not everything here is honest work.
Sell fake saints' bones to anyone gullible enough to buy them. Honest folk will turn you down, and every refusal gets you more attention from the watch.

Let the heat build up and the guards come for you. If they catch you, they take a cut of everything you own and you wake up in the dungeon under Highcrown Castle.

There's always a fence who'll take what you shouldn't have.

Fight your way up the card on the sand under the Colosseum for the championship belt, swinging whatever weapon you forged.

Work your way from the Serf Shack to a room at the inn, then out to Oakhollow, where a turf shack can grow into a stone manor.

And if you ever scrape together a billion gold, you can buy the King's Castle. The old king takes the money and retires to the coast, the whole household bows, and all five royal floors are yours.

Other ways to blow your money:
Ten buildings around the kingdom you can buy as investments, each paying you rent every night

Furniture from six different shops to fill every room

Gowns, rings and strange curiosities from the Bazaar

A bank that pays interest, and a lender for when you come up short

The stables have ten horses, from a scruffy pit pony to a proper warhorse, and you can shoe them, train them and dress them up. The Menagerie in the Bazaar sells exotic pets, including a monkey, a bear, a lion, a tiger and an elephant, assuming your roof is big enough. And that's before the griffin, unicorn and dragon you can raise on your farm.

When the day's work is done, head down to the Knucklebone's cellar for dice. There are three games, and a pipe or a drink is said to help your luck. Or shoot arrows at the archery butts in Highcrown, bet on the night races, sing at the Half Moon, try stand-up at the Fool's Yard, or settle in at the Leaky Tun for the night.

If you're not sure where to start, the first quest line walks you through the basics. After that there are six more to chase, covering the guild chair, the back-alley relic trade, romance, banking, horses and the championship belt. Every step pays out gold.

Up to four players can share the same kingdom over LAN. Work side by side or go your separate ways, and settle any arguments with a duel.

Six districts, each with its own look and its own medieval trap theme song

Day and night, four seasons, rain, snow and thunderstorms

A save slot for every character

Full controller support

DRANGUS STUDIOS — ARTISANAL AI SLOP, EST. 2026
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