A kingdom at your own pace.

Build your village and face up to seven rival rulers, each growing a settlement elsewhere in the meadowlands.

• Explore — drag the ground or use WASD / arrow keys (hold Shift to hurry). Scroll, press + and −, or pinch with two fingers to zoom. Click or drag across the overview map to travel.
• Meet your villagers — click selects and right-click gives orders: click a villager, then right-click open ground to send them there. Clicking empty ground only clears the selection, so a missed click never interrupts anyone's work. On touch, tap your own characters and buildings to select them and tap anywhere else to give the order; when several characters stand under your finger, a small list lets you choose. Double-click a villager or troop (press and hold on touch) to select every one of that kind on screen. Hold Shift and drag, or on touch press Area and drag, to select everyone in a box; a box takes troops before villagers.
• Idle hands — the idle button beside the map counts villagers with nothing to do, and a small bubble floats over each. Click it or press . to pick the next one; Shift-click picks them all. Villagers opens an overview of who is idle, gathering, or building: click a name to select, ⌖ to find them, then choose their work.
• Commands — the panel on the right shows what your selection can do, as in Age of Empires. Hover a command for its cost and what it does; a cost you cannot yet afford shows in rose.
• Fog of war — you see only what your villagers, troops, and buildings can see. Unexplored land lies under a dark shroud; land you have explored but cannot see now is dimmed and shows things as they were when you last looked. Cavalry see farthest and make good scouts. Explore before building: foundations need explored ground.
• Gather resources — select one or more villagers (Shift-click adds or removes one), then right-click a tree, rock, gold deposit, farm, or fish in the stream. The Wood, Stone, Gold, Farm, and Fish commands choose a nearby source. The treasury shows how many villagers work each resource. When a source runs out, villagers move on to another of the same kind within sight; if there is none nearby, they wait for your orders.
• Grow your village — select the town hall and Train Villager for 50 food and 10 seconds; press it again to queue up to five. Every recruit in training, at every building, shows in the row at the top left: click one to visit its building, or right-click it (press and hold on touch) to cancel the last recruit and have its cost returned. Recruits share housing with troops; build cottages for more room. With a training building selected, right-click ground to set a rally point for its recruits (marked by a small flag), or right-click a tree, rock, farm, or fishing spot so new villagers start gathering there. Right-click the building itself to clear it.
• Bring it home — villagers carry up to eight resources to the closest reachable suitable store: food to mills, wood to lumber camps, stone and gold to mining camps, or anything to a town hall. Store ends the work order; right-click a suitable building to deliver there. A move keeps carried cargo. Villagers who finish a lumber camp, mining camp, or mill stay on to work the nearest trees, stone, or farm and fish beside it.
• Hunt — select villagers and right-click a roaming sheep or press Hunt. They pursue it, hunt it for food, then carry each load to a store. Sheep wander until caught.
• Build and repair — villagers raise every building: select one or more, open their Build tab (homes, food, stores, and trade) or Military tab (troops' buildings and defences), and choose a building; B places the last one chosen again. Place its foundation on clear, gentle ground and your selected villagers walk over and build it; right-click the site, or press Build, with more villagers selected to finish sooner. Builders who finish walk on to the next unfinished foundation until none remain. Damaged buildings lose health and visibly crumble. If you have enough of the building's original materials, select villagers and right-click it to repair it.
• Grow and train — finished barracks, archery, stables, and monasteries can train soldiers, archers, cavalry, or priests. Recruits cost resources and need completed cottage housing. Select a recruit and right-click ground to move. Characters make room around one another.
• Fortify — walls follow the cursor as a square post and follow the rise and fall of the land without levelling it. Click a start, then an end to build the previewed line; red sections are skipped. Endpoints snap to nearby walls, gates, and towers. Gates align automatically with walls and replace the masonry they overlap, keeping the rest of the line. Watch towers place with one click. Escape cancels. Gates open for their owner but stay closed to rivals. Watch towers fire automatically at enemies in range. Select archers and right-click a completed tower to garrison up to five; select the tower to ungarrison them.
• Gold and the market — gold deposits, grey boulders studded with golden nuggets, are mined like stone. Gold buys nothing else yet: select your village's market stall (or another market you build) to buy or sell food, wood, or stone 100 at a time. Each button shows its price in gold; buying raises a good's price and selling lowers it, and the market keeps 30% of each sale. Rivals mine gold and trade at their own markets by the same rules.
• Stances — select troops and choose how they fight on their own. Aggressive (the default) engages any enemy in sight and chases it. Defensive engages enemies near its post, chases a short way, then walks back. Stand ground never moves to fight and strikes only what comes within reach. No attack never starts or returns a fight. Every stance obeys a direct attack order.
• Moving together — a group keeps a formation that faces its march and narrows, down to single file, to fit a gap; units file in behind one another at a chokepoint. Troops sent against a foe they cannot reach, such as one behind walls, take on the nearest enemy they can reach instead. Cavalry keep after a fleeing enemy and strike as they catch it.
• Groups — press Ctrl and a number from 1 to 9 to remember the selected villagers or troops as a group; press the number to select them again, and press it twice to go to them.
• Docks and boats — choose Dock in the Build list and point at a shore: the dock turns to face the water, its boathouse on the bank and its pier over open water. It needs dry land behind it for villagers and wide water in front, away from bridges. A finished dock stores food and launches fishing boats (60 wood) and galleons (40 food, 170 wood, 40 stone). Select boats and right-click water to sail, a fishing spot or shoal to fish, or a dock to land the catch; fishing boats move on to the nearest shoal nearby when theirs is fished out. Galleons loose arrows at enemy boats, then troops and villagers, then buildings on the shore, within about 8 units; only archers, towers, catapults, and other boats can strike back. Boats cannot pass under bridges. With a dock selected, right-click water or a shoal to set its rally point.
• Delete — select your own units, villagers, or a building and press Delete (the key or the Delete command), then press it again within four seconds to confirm. An unfinished foundation returns the materials not yet used. Your last town hall cannot be deleted.
• Heal your friends — idle priests tend nearby injured allies. Select priests and right-click an injured friendly character to follow and heal them. Right-click open ground to cancel. Priests cannot heal themselves, buildings, enemies, or fallen characters.
• Rival villages — every rival starts with the same town hall, three cottages, mill, market, eight villagers, stored supplies, and starting field, somewhere else in the meadowlands. Each has its own temperament and plays by your rules: they gather, build, train, scout, raid, defend, and march on whoever seems weakest or has wronged them, so no two matches go alike. Their villages start hidden in the fog: send scouts to find them. Select guards and right-click an enemy unit or building to attack (clicking one only shows it); once you have found a town hall, Attack in the Villages panel marches on it and View shows it. Guards automatically fight nearby enemies when idle; ground orders cancel attacks. Villagers fight back when attacked and can be sent against an enemy, but they are far weaker than troops; afterwards they return to their work. Each rival wears its own colour on clothing, flags, health bars, and the overview map. Allies on your team share their sight and fight beside you. When your village is attacked, the warning offers to take you there. A rival whose last town hall falls is out of the match; destroy every rival town hall to win. If yours falls, Keep watching shows the whole map while the remaining villages fight on.
• The whole screen — on a phone or tablet the first tap takes the game full screen where the browser allows it. On an iPhone, add Hearthvale to your Home Screen (Share, then Add to Home Screen) and it opens like an app with no browser bars; in Safari, your first up-and-down drag on the map tucks Safari's bars away. On a computer, use the Full screen tool.
• The game menu — press Esc or ☰ to pause and open the menu. Save your village to your account, save and quit, load another save, or return to the main menu. Settings there choose the interface size and what dragging the map does. Sign in or create an account to keep your villages between visits.
• Set the mood — change the sunlight, try nature sounds, or press H for an unobstructed view.

Press ? in a match, or How to play in the menu, for the guided tutorial · Sign in to save your villages