What kind of game "Sand Keep: Castle RTS" is: the bread chain, taxes and who marches at you

There is a genre that rarely survived in the browser at a sane size: a real real-time strategy with castle building, a peasant economy and a siege column on the horizon. Here it fits on one page without a single asset — all the sand, palms and stone walls are drawn by code.

What this game is

Sand Keep is an RTS about founding a castle in an oasis. Two thousand gold, eight peasants, an empty lot, and an enemy lord on the far side of the map. One win rule: kill the other lord and keep yours alive. Everything else is economy, and the economy is stricter than combat.

How to play: briefly

1. Resources do not mine themselves. A stockpile has to touch the keep or another stockpile, the woodcutter fells palms (4 wood per trip), and the quarry must touch rock — you cannot drop it on open sand.

2. Food is a four-building line: the wheat farm only grows on fertile oasis ground, the mill grinds 4 wheat into 8 flour, the bakery bakes 2 flour into 8 bread, and all of it lands in the granary. The dairy farm adds 3 cheese every 26 seconds.

3. Hunger is counted per month: a month is 20 seconds here and one peasant eats half a unit of food. Fail to feed them and popularity drops by 8, the unhappy leave without saying a word, and in a minute nobody is left to fell palms.

4. Taxes are a choice between the treasury and the people: 0.6, 1.0 or 1.6 gold per peasant per month for −2, −4 or −7 popularity. Free feeding does not work either, but at 100 popularity a new settler arrives every 16 seconds.

5. The market evens out the treasury: one lot is 5 units, stone is bought at 110 and sold at 45, wood at 60 and 25. Stone costs more than wood for exactly the reason that a quarry takes three tiles and still has to sit against a rock.

6. The army is bought with gold and recruited through the barracks: spearman 25, archer 40, swordsman 80, knight 160, catapult 200 gold plus 20 wood. A swordsman hits walls 1.5 times as hard as a spearman, a catapult three times.

7. Defence is paid in stone: one wall tile is 1 stone and 300 hit points, a gatehouse lets your people through and stops theirs, and a lookout tower for 15 stone garrisons four archers with 50 percent more range.

8. The waves depend on who you picked. Jackal leads his first column out on month 8 and adds a wave of three, growing by 1.5. Viper starts at 6.5 months and walls his own keep in. Sultan arrives on month 5 with eight, every 200 seconds, and keeps an army of up to forty.

Controls

Mouse and keyboard:

• left click selects, drags a box, places a building; right click gives an order — move, attack, garrison a tower
• WASD or arrows, scroll at the edge, middle-drag moves the camera; Space jumps home to the keep
• Esc cancels, Del demolishes, P pauses, 1/2/3 set speed, M mutes, H opens the rules scroll

On a phone the same finger does it: tap selects, long-press gives the order, swipe moves the camera, the "Box" button turns selection into a drag box, and "Keep" and "Cancel" are the old Space and Esc. The map is wide, so the game asks for landscape.

A couple of tips

• Do not raise the barracks before the bakery: recruiting takes peasants away, and hungry recruits desert at the first enemy wall.
• Keep a hovel in reserve: the 8 spots inside the keep run out in the second minute, and without housing no settlers arrive at all.
• Send the catapult at the wall behind the tower, not at the tower: 80 splash damage and a triple building multiplier make it a tool, not a unit.
• Count buildings, not kills: fame is 100 per enemy head and 50 per building, walls are not in that sum, so a held corner of the map is worth less than a full workyard.
• Watch the demo on the game page: the autopilot places the stockpile, granary and woodcutters itself and walks the army over to the enemy keep.

A month here is shorter than one bad wave. Sand Keep: Castle RTS