A valley that hangs together
Air, water, weather, wages, businesses and politics are all one connected system. Buy a business, sign petitions, vote, or open God Mode to watch the whole valley from above at up to 240x speed.
Free early build · v0.23 · in development
Farm, fish and fall in with a small lake town that breathes the same air you do.
Free to play. Pay what you want if you'd like to support it ($4 suggested, $0 is fine).
Windows 10/11 64-bit · v0.23 · 4.4 MB ZIP · plays offline
Millbrook is a small lake town in a mountain valley, and you run the farm on the edge of it. On your first morning your neighbour, Wren Hollis, is waiting at the door to show you the ropes: water the wheat, milk a cow, sell at the stand, cast a line in the pond.
Across the lake, Gunnar Halvorsen's coal plant keeps the lights on and the stack smoking. Tessa Vance's Cumulus data center wants more of its power and more of the lake for cooling. At the Town Hall, Dr. Fischer is trying to get a council with its own motives to listen before the weather turns.
None of it is scripted. Smoke drifts on the wind, the water carries whatever goes into it, and jobs, prices, votes and moods push on each other. Leave it alone and, over the years, the heat domes, cold snaps and storms get worse until neighbours start to pack up. Get involved and you can change where the valley goes. Or go fishing. That's allowed too.
Air where you stand
Every reading on your screen comes from the simulation: your cows, the plant's stack and the wind all move these numbers.
Air, water, weather, wages, businesses and politics are all one connected system. Buy a business, sign petitions, vote, or open God Mode to watch the whole valley from above at up to 240x speed.
65 species and 7 legends across the farm pond, Millbrook Lake, the creeks, the harbour, the open sea and Tamarack Lake up in the mountains. Every catch has a length, weight, age and health, and the water it lived in matters. Dig your own bait, read the rises, fish through the ice in winter, enter derbies and chase town records.
Ten crops, apple trees, cows to milk, a farm stand by the road, a kitchen to cook in and a Fall Fair to win ribbons at.
Townsfolk go to work, shop, chat over fences and notice what you do. A dozen regulars have stories you can help with, and seven of them are open to romance, a wedding and a family.
Grass parts as you walk through it, wind runs across the water, and the music is soft and sparse. There's no timer on anything. Sit on the bench by the pond if that's what the day calls for.
Trees bud, turn and drop their leaves. Winter brings snow, boot prints, a skating rink, colds if you don't dress warm, and ice fishing from a shanty.
Climb past town to mountain goats, bears and cougars, an alpine lake, a beaver pond and a marsh with gators. Hunt deer and turkey, and stay out late for the Milky Way and the odd shooting star.
Downwind is in active development, and this build is here so people can play it and tell us what they think. It's free. If you enjoy it and want to help, itch.io lets you pay what you want; $4 is the suggestion, and nothing at all is fine.
What's in v0.23: the farm, fishing, hunting, cooking, the town and its people, romance and families, business ownership, Town Hall politics, the wild valley, four seasons and winter sports. Updates land often, and every one so far has added something you can see.
Expect rough edges. Balance isn't tuned yet, some corners of the valley are plainer than others, and you'll find things we haven't.
What was fun, what felt slow, what broke, and what you'd like to see next. What players ask for shapes the next update.
Leave feedback on itch.ioDownwind.exe. It opens the game in its own window and nothing goes online.The game picks a graphics level for your computer the first time it runs; change it any time in Settings. A player manual (MANUAL.txt) comes in the ZIP.