Kinstead

Found a village in an empty valley, or take over one that's a few weeks along: a riverside hamlet, a market village, a mill town, a crossroads village, the Cathedral city, ten years on with some 3,000 villagers round a domed Capitol, or the Metropolis: the most people a valley can hold, some 47,000 of them round the Houses of Parliament.

Dozens of projects in branches from building works to transport unlock buildings, upgrade paths, building styles and new abilities: joining neighbours, buying land, moving houses, 2×2 estates, grand parks, a Capitol and a Parliament, and burying the power lines.

Knock two neighbours into one: two cottages make a terrace, a home and a shop a shophouse, a tavern and a workshop a brewhouse. Grow a double plot onto the two beside it and rebuild it as a manor estate, a cathedral close or a college quad.

Build the town hall with a clock tower, a dome, in Gothic or behind a temple front, then grow it across bigger grounds into a Capitol and the Houses of Parliament. Law courts, a museum, an opera house and a library beside it make a civic quarter that raises every tax.

Plough fields out beyond the farmyard and choose what each farm grows: wheat, barley or vegetables, or sheep, cattle and poultry on fenced pasture. The crops ripen and fall back to stubble with the seasons.

A shop for every trade, from the greengrocer to the bank. Shopfronts turn the corner, the backs show the trade, and shoppers go to the nearer shops that sell what they're after.

Host your town and send friends a six-character code. Up to eight players build the same town live from their own browsers, see each other's cursors, and the host decides who gets in.

Join two saved towns into one valley. Drag the incoming village into place in the game view, and the ground, rivers, roads, homes and people are knitted together.

SpringSummerAutumnWinter

Spring blossom, golden fields, autumn leaves and winter snow, the trees turning a few at a time. Showers roll through, snow settles on the roofs, and after dark the windows and street lamps light up.

Real 3D drawn small with outlines and scaled up crisply, in the spirit of the late-90s city sims. Turn the view, flip to a 2D map, pick a pixel size, or switch on tilt-shift for a model-village look.

Keeps a laptop cool and quiet: one click in Settings sets every performance choice low, and Best look puts them back. Each choice can be set on its own too.

Every villager has a name, an age, a family, a home, friends and a trait or two. Children go to school, grown-ups to work or college, shoppers carry home their baskets, and families move in when the town is a happy place to live.

A day passes in eight minutes at normal speed. Lamps come on once the town has power, villagers carry lanterns home, and a soundtrack made up as it plays slows into a minor key at night.