Forge Keeper: Smithy Simulator

You are the village blacksmith. People come to your counter with orders — a dagger for a traveller, a scythe for a farmer, a sword for a knight — and it is your hands that make them.

MINE, SMELT, FORGE Send Joe to the old quarry for copper, iron and gold ore. Melt it down in the furnace into clean ingots. Then take the hammer: every piece is shaped on the anvil, blow by blow, riveted, ground on the wheel and polished. Four steps, and you are back at the start — only now the orders pay more and the furnace runs hotter.

THE HAMMER IS THE GAME Strike while the metal glows and the shape builds up. Miss the moment and the edge goes crooked. Every finished piece is graded, from Scrap to the highest mark, and the price is multiplied by that grade — sloppy work hits your purse the same day.

FIFTY THINGS TO FORGE From a plain dagger to a two-handed zweihander, from a farmer's scythe to a hetman's sabre. A flamberge, a claymore, a bardiche, a halberd, an estoc, a falchion, a glaive, a rapier, a katana, a trident, a war hammer, a mace. Things these games usually skip: Mjolnir, a rune cleaver, a winged sword. And the honest farm kit — a horseshoe, a sickle, a pitchfork, a hoe, shears, a saw. Tools are forged as carefully as swords. They just pay less.

ORDERS THAT DO NOT WAIT Every guest leaves a note with a deadline. Miss it and the order burns: the guest walks out, and the piece stays on your hands to sell for whatever the counter will give. Keep up, and better customers start finding your door on their own.

METALS YOU HAVE TO EARN Copper and iron from the first day. Gold and diamond once the deeper mines open. Orichalcum and aurite only after the furnace is rebuilt — they do not come cheap, and neither does what you make from them.

UPGRADE EVERYTHING A copper crucible is slow, a diamond one is not. A better furnace takes on harder metal. A better grindstone saves an edge you had almost ruined. Every coin goes back into the workshop, and the workshop pays it back in the orders it can finally accept.

THE SHOP IS YOURS TOO Whatever does not go to an order goes on the counter, and there you set the price yourself. Too high and it gathers dust. Too low and you are working for free. Guests wander in without an order, look around, and sometimes buy the very thing you were about to melt back down.

FROM A VILLAGE BENCH TO THE CASTLE You start under a thatched roof with one anvil and one furnace. Earn your name and the workshop moves to the town, and then to the castle — where the king himself walks in to test your craft, and asks for something no ordinary smith could hand him.

GUESTS WITH A CHARACTER Joe blinks, glances aside and grumbles when you poke him. Zakhar turns up with a cat, and the cat stays in the forge for good. Everyone arrives with a deadline, a temper, and a price they think is fair.

THE SMALL THINGS Each barb, rivet and edge is its own stage on the anvil, not one texture stretched over the whole blade — you can see where the hammer landed. Poke the guests and they answer back. Ignore the cat and it settles by the fire anyway.

THIRTY-ONE MINUTES OF MUSIC Twelve tracks, mixed as an album rather than a loop: a quiet opening, a rise through the middle, a fall back into silence. The last track meets the first, because the playlist runs in a circle.

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