Home By The River is a unique builder game set in a dystopian not too distant future. You move to a polluted land by a river so that you may build your clean reactor secretly, and hide from the mighty Sigil Corporation. Construct your home & lab, farm, harvest, cook, earn money, gain virtue, clean pollution, get your technology out to the world, and so transform your dystopian world forever by your efforts. Enlist Pioneers of various professions to help you in your cause! You can play single player or LAN co-op.

A more advanced player can finish all of the main game objectives in about four hours play time and after that the game becomes a house building sandbox. All systems in the game have been purposefully made swift so there is no tedious grinding. No planting one by one, harvesting one by one, placing things one by one, or being limited in how much can be achieved in one day. HBTR is the passion of a solo developer so if you'd like to see improvements made to the game then please do write on the discussion board. The dev prioritises the lowest hanging fruit that makes the game more fun.

CLEAN POLLUTION

Cut down dead trees.
Remove trash.
Plant new trees.
Place solar panels.
Establish wind farms.
When you're filthy rich, build your clean reactor.

CREATE YOUR HOME

Build your dream home, and feel free to share what you've made with the Discord community. As you level up you'll gain more tiles that can be unlocked and placed in the world and evenutally you can build your lab as well. I've designed the tools for construction to be easy to use:

Right click acts like a colour picker and can also swap to the Axe tool for quick harvesting.
Alpha numeric keys allow you to quickly select a mode; delete, build, interact, inventory, foreground, props.
You can left click drag build and delete for fast construction and deletion.
Holding down left shift while constructing will immediately build a solid wall which is great for building faster and setting up defense walls against the Sigil drones.

FARM AND HARVEST

Plant corn, wheat, sugar, and trees.
Sell the harvested crop or you can process them further for use in cooking.
Let some trees grow to help reduce pollution and harvest some to sell their lumber. Do sustainable forestry.

YOUR STATS

Hunger - you can't do anything if you're hungry so eat food.
Energy - you can't do anything if you're tired, so get rest.
Spirit - you can't do anything if you're depressed, so meditate.
Hidden - your world will be demolished if you get found out so do keep away from the drones and destroy them.
Experience - gain XP, level up so you get more tile types to build and more neat stuff to do.
Virtue - defines how people react to you and your end game experience.

EARN INCOME

Sell harvested crops to rivermen, or better, through a trading terminal when you're higher level.
Collect sky nodes and get money, XP, and spirit.
Make computer games, if you make a legendary one you will make tons of cash.
Establish ventures in the background and let the passive income roll in.
Build solar panels. Yes, you'll get income from your solar farm.
Bail out businesses that are close to default. They'll take you on as a shareholder and give you dividends!

AND MUCH MORE

Establish your underground lab, gain research points, unlock research cards and create clean reactor components that you'll donate to the world.
Stop Sigil drone swarms from demolishing what you have built and upgrade your lightning rod to fight back!
Enlist pioneers who will help you achieve your objectives. Harvester pioneers will remove trash, cut down dead trees and harvest mature crops for you.
Feed your super cat, change its colours, or give it a hat.
Play single player or over LAN. Harvested resources are duplicated across the network so everyone benefits. Also you can place a chest in the world to share items or just store it in that world!
Upgrade your hoverboard and fly!
And more for you to experience.

ARE YOU INTERESTED IN GAME DEV?

If you're interested in developing your own games then you may be interested in my Gamer To Game Developer Series 2. It is the foundation for Home By The River and you'll see how to make your own 2D world that players can build using the Unity game engine. If you want to make an open world survival craft type of game with world building like Terraria then I do recommend using Unity engine over GameMaker and RPG Maker and Godot because of Unity's powerful 2D tools and superb tilemap system.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/292350/Gamer_To_Game_Developer_Series_2_Learn_Unity_2D__2021_Relaunch/

Thanks for coming by!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2080020

HBTR - | Build | Farm | Harvest | Clean Pollution | screenshots