The Old West manual

The Old West is a frontier town builder that plays in the browser and keeps running on the clock while the tab is closed. You start around 1860 with one trading post and $6,000. You end, a few weeks later, with a city the whole West rolls through, and then you do it again in another territory.

The game has two halves. The live half is what you watch: trains stop at your platforms, trade cargo, take on coal and pay. The come-back half is what happens while you are gone: every building earns dollars by the minute into its own bank, builds and upgrades finish on real timers, surveys return, rings of unclaimed land get cleared, and the daily reward resets at midnight. Most of your dollars, by a wide margin, come from the banks. The trains are the life of the place; the banks are the income.

Nothing is rushed. A tier-1 building takes a minute and a half to open. A tier-4 Union Depot takes four hours, and taking it to level 3 is a twenty-hour project. There is no speed-up button: the game runs at one pace, Pause or 1×. The only accelerator is Gold Dust, a premium currency you earn steadily by playing and can also buy. Nothing in the game is gated behind it.

What you do, in one breath

• Build next to the town, inside your plot, and wait for each building to open.
• Tap banks: a glowing coin above a building means it is ready. The dollars fly to your counter.
• Serve trains: give them a platform with an open side, provisions, a bed and a hot meal, and they pay and trust you.
• Trade: trains sell what their home town exports and buy what it imports. Set Buy and Sell per good.
• Keep the water running: every building draws water; wind pumps run dry in a drought, flumes do not.
• Grow a town: residents move in when quality of life is high, pay rent and run businesses.
• Expand: clear rings of unclaimed land around the trading post; unlock the next of eight regions.
• Ride out: send surveys for charts, cargo, Gold Dust and discoveries for the Almanac.
• Come back: claim missions and achievements, climb the town ranks, keep the daily streak.

Two clocks

Two kinds of time run at once and it helps to keep them apart. Real time is the wall clock: build timers, bank filling, surveys, ring clearing and the daily reward all run on it, whether or not the game is open. Game time is counted in days: one game day lasts 48 seconds at 1×, and only advances while the game is open and not paused. Trains, trade, residents, renown drift and telegrams run on game days. The status bar shows income per game day; the Build panel shows your bank rate per real minute.

The game opens a short guided tour the first time you found a town. This chapter walks the same path, so you can read ahead or catch anything you skipped. You can replay the tour later from Settings.

While the building pictures load, the title shows a loading line and Found your town waits for it to reach 100%. Before the tour starts, two things happen. The daily reward sheet opens, because a fresh profile has a reward waiting; claim it or press Later. And the Build button on the left rail starts to pulse: that is the game's first pointer.

1. Welcome, Founder

   The Trading Post sits in the middle of the world. Drag to pan and roll the wheel to zoom; 0 fits the town back into view. The dashed line around the Trading Post is the edge of your plot: a 7×5 field of 35 cells you can build on.

2. The status bar

   Across the top: Dollars with yesterday's income, Gold Dust with a + that opens the Store, Water used over supplied, Residents over homes with the hands in town, Renown out of five, then your town rank ring, the daily reward bell and the Pause / 1× control.

3. Open Build

   Press B or click Build. The panel lists four tiers of buildings with their cost, bank rate per minute, water pips and build time. Only tier 1 is open at level 1.

4. Place a Rail Depot

   Click the Rail Depot card, then a bracketed cell. Trains need a platform, and a platform needs an open side: leave at least one empty cell next to every platform so trains can pull up. Your first three tier-1 builds are instant.

5. Water: a Wind Pump

   Every building draws water; the Trading Post supplies 10 and a Wind Pump adds 6. Raise one now, before the readout turns red.

6. Storage: a Freight House

   The Trading Post holds 50 units of cargo. A Freight House adds 200. Without room you cannot buy what trains are carrying, and trade is where the live dollars come from.

7. Builds take time from now on

   Your fourth building arrives as a scaffold: a hatched frame, a progress ring and a timer. Tier-1 builds take 90 seconds, tier 2 twelve minutes, tier 3 an hour, tier 4 four hours. Click the scaffold and you can skip the wait for Gold Dust: 1 Dust per eight minutes left, so the first skips cost a single Dust.

8. Banks

   Buildings earn into a local bank. When a bank is a quarter full a bobbing coin appears above the building; when it is full the coin grows a halo and nothing more accrues until you collect. Tap the coin. The Trading Post's bank is the first one you will see.

9. Trains and trade

   The first train is already on approach. Freight (F) shows who is stopped, holding or departing and what each freight line trusts you; Market (M) shows prices, your stock and the Buy / Sell policy for every good.

10. Missions and achievements

    Missions (J) keeps three goals live at a time and a second tab of lifetime achievements in bronze, silver and gold. Finishing a goal is not the end of it: come back and press Claim.

11. Territory and the West

    The hatched, dim field around your plot is unclaimed land. Click it to buy the next ring. Map (G) shows the other seven regions, each with its own country, bias and lock.

12. Surveys

    Surveys (E) sends a party from your Rail Depot to any region, locked or not. It comes back after 30 minutes to a day with goods, often a chart, sometimes Gold Dust or a discovery for the Almanac.

13. Daily reward, the Store and this manual

    The bell in the status bar is the seven-day streak. The Store offers Gold Dust through a secure checkout. The town is yours.

A sensible first session

The Founding chapter of missions is the tutorial's reward track: build a platform, a freight house and a wind pump, tap a bank, serve three trains, read a telegram, clear your first ring. Together those seven missions pay 35 Gold Dust on top of the 20 you start with, plus $4,100. With a Coaling Yard and a Boarding House down as well, you have a town that earns about $25 a minute into its banks and takes visitors' money on the side.

Then leave it. Come back in an hour and the banks are a third full; come back tomorrow and they are at their caps, the ring is cleared and the daily is waiting. That is the shape of the whole game.

The world fills the screen. Everything you touch floats over it: a status bar, a command rail, one panel at a time, a notices column and a context bar. Nothing blocks the world; the camera slides over when a panel would cover the town.

The status bar

• Wordmark and region. The active region's name, then your town name and its register number (OW- and four digits, derived from the name). Click it to open the territory map.
• Dollars. Your purse, shared across every region. The small triangle and figure beside it is yesterday's net income per game day: green up, red down.
• Gold Dust. The premium figure, with a + lozenge that opens the Store.
• Water. Used over supplied, with pips. Blue when healthy, amber with a square during a drought, red with a down-triangle when you are drawing more than you supply.
• Residents. Permanent residents over homes, and under it the visitors in town: the hands of every stopped train.
• Renown. Zero to five, with five pips that fill as it climbs.
• Rank ring. Your rank badge inside an arc that fills toward the next rank. Hover it for the exact XP and what the next rank grants.
• Cloud glyph. The state of your cloud save: blue when synced, pulsing while it syncs, amber when offline or in error. Click it for Settings > Account.
• Daily bell. A dot means today's reward is unclaimed.
• Speed. Pause or 1×. There is no faster setting.

Under the bar, a condition strip appears when something is wrong or special: a outlaw raid or stockyard fever (red), a drought with the days left, or a festival with its spending multiplier.

The command rail

Ten buttons down the left, each with a key: Build B, Town S, Market M, Freight F, Surveys E, Map G, Missions J, Almanac R, Store, and Settings pinned at the bottom. A key pressed twice closes the panel again. Badges on the rail tell you what is waiting: a count on Missions for claimable missions and achievements, a count on Surveys for returned hands, a count on Town for ready banks once you can collect them all at once, and a dot on the Store when an offer is on.

Panels

One panel opens at a time, 440 pixels wide, sliding in from the rail. Each has a title, a one-line subtitle with the numbers that matter, sometimes a tab strip, and a scrolling body. The panels in brief:

• Build: four tier shelves of building cards; town rate, water and platforms at the top.
• Town: with nothing selected, the overview: quality of life, residents, water, platforms, the banked total with Collect all, the Territory block, income by category and depot records. Click a building and the panel becomes its card: bank, build progress, upgrade and demolish.
• Market: every good with its price, your stock, Buy / Sell toggles and a broker button.
• Freight: trains in the region by state, then each freight line's trust bar, office, loan and the goods it brings and buys.
• Surveys: slots, hands under way with countdown rings, returned hands with Debrief, and the eight destinations.
• Map: the West as a chart; click a node for its region card.
• Missions with an Achievements tab.
• Almanac: trains, peoples and keepsakes, dark until found.
• Store and Settings.

Notices and Next up

Toasts stack at the top right, four at most, each with a chip for its kind and often a button: Focus on a finished build, Claim on a completed mission, Debrief on a returned survey. Below them the Next up strip lists the three soonest timers across builds, upgrades, surveys, ring clearings and the daily reward, counting down live. Click a row to jump to the building or open the panel.

The context bar

The bottom bar is the game talking to you. On the left, a hint that changes with the situation: what to do with a placing ghost, why a cell is invalid, that a platform is blocked, that a till is ready, that a survey is back. In the middle, when a building is selected, its quick actions: Collect, Skip for Gold Dust while it builds, Upgrade, Focus, Demolish. On the right, the ? button opens the keys reference.

In the world

The town is built on one plank platform laid out as a diamond grid in the same raised three-quarter view as the art, so every building lines up with its neighbors. Each building is a miniature of its picture standing on its cell, with a thin line in its family hue around the cell to keep the grid legible, and neighboring buildings are joined by covered walkways. Trains run the same two diagonals, front first, and stand broadside to their platform at the end of a boarding ramp. Hover a building for a tooltip with its description, bank and water; hover a train for its freight line, captain, hands, load and wants. Click a building to select it; double-click to focus the camera on it.

A stopped train stands broadside to its platform at the end of a boarding ramp, and two to five figures walk across: hands from wagon trains and freight trains, passengers from express trains, traders from Lone Star and Golden Gate trains, a marshal when you have a Jailhouse, porters with a baggage cart when cargo moves at a freight house. Trains waiting for a platform hold down the line at the far edges of the yard with a HOLD tag and the days waited. The figures need the effects tier at High and a zoom above 0.9, and stay home under reduced motion.

Tier 1: the trading post kit

Six buildings are open from the first minute. Together they are a platform, a freight house, water, coal, beds and meals: everything a passing wagon train asks for.

Placement rules

Pick a card, then click a cell. A cell is valid when all of these hold, and the hint tells you which one failed:

• It is empty.
• It is inside your plot. Unclaimed land is hatched; clear the ring first (Territory).
• The building's tier is open: tier 2 needs town level 2, tier 3 level 3, tier 4 level 4.
• You can afford it. Cards you cannot afford dim their cost and show how much more you need.
• It touches the town: at least one of its four neighbors is already occupied. A building still under construction counts as a neighbor.

The placing ghost is the building's own picture at half strength: clear on a valid cell, hatched red on an invalid one. Placing deducts the cost at once. Press Esc or right-click to stop placing; running out of dollars stops it for you. The first three tier-1 builds of a brand-new profile finish instantly; every build after that runs on its timer.

Platforms and the open side

A Rail Depot only works if it has an empty cell next to it. Trains pull up to the empty neighbor farthest from the Trading Post; that cell is the stopping place. Box a platform in on all four sides and it still counts as a building, still draws water and still fills its bank, but no train can use it. The tooltip and the Town panel say Platform blocked when this happens, and the context bar nags you about it. The Trading Post has a platform of its own under the same rule.

Timers, scaffolds and skips

A building under construction is a scaffold: its miniature dimmed and greyed under a hatched frame, with a progress ring and a timer. While it builds it draws water and counts as a neighbor, but it has no platform, beds, storage or bank, and it does not count toward your town level. When the ring closes the building opens with a chime, a toast offers Focus, and the level is recomputed.

Click a scaffold (or select it and use the context bar) to skip the rest for Gold Dust. The cost is the same everywhere a timer runs: 1 Dust for every 8 minutes remaining, rounded up, minimum 1. Ninety seconds costs 1 Dust; twelve minutes, 2; an hour, 8; four hours, 30; a twenty-hour level-3 Union Depot, 150.

Far regions are the last four in unlock order: New Mexico, Texas, Oregon Country and Gold Country. Their builds, upgrades and ring clearings all take half again as long.

Upgrades

Every building except the Trading Post has three levels. Select it and press Upgrade. Level 2 costs twice the building's price and takes twice its build time; level 3 costs five times the price and takes five times the build time. The building keeps working at its current level while the scaffold runs, and the upgrade can be skipped like any build. Each level raises the bank rate and cap, and some buildings gain more:

• Rail Depot: trains are served in 85% of the time at level 2 and 70% at level 3.
• Boarding House and Frame Houses: 25% more beds or homes at level 2, 50% more at level 3.
• Wind Pump (fitted with a larger tank) and Mountain Flume: 25% more water at level 2, 50% more at level 3.

Upgrades also count toward your town level, at half a building per level gained.

Demolishing

Select a building and press Demolish. You get half the cost back, and anything in its bank is lost; the confirm says how much. You cannot demolish the Trading Post, a platform with a train at it, or any building whose removal would cut other buildings off from the Trading Post.

The roster

Rates are dollars per real minute at level 1; caps are the level-1 bank ceiling, three hours of rate. Water is per building: positive supplies, negative draws.

Level-2 and level-3 bank rates are 1.6× and 2.4× the level-1 rate, with caps of 4 and 6 hours of the new rate: a Rail Depot goes 5 → 8 → $12 a minute with caps of 900 → 1,920 → 4,320. In far regions multiply every time in this table by 1.5.

Every building with a rate earns dollars per real minute into its own bank, which the game also calls a till. Banks fill whether or not the game is open, up to a cap. Tapping them is the single most satisfying act in the game, and it is where most of your money comes from.

Rates and caps

At level 1 a building's rate is its cost divided by 150 per minute, rounded: a Rail Depot earns 5, a Mountain Flume 20, a Union Depot 80. The Trading Post earns 3. Its cap is 180 minutes of rate, so three hours after you last collected, the bank is full and stops. Level 2 multiplies the rate by 1.6 and raises the cap to 240 minutes of the new rate; level 3 multiplies the level-1 rate by 2.4 with a cap of 360 minutes.

A building under construction banks nothing; a building upgrading keeps banking at its old level until the scaffold closes. Town rank 5, Superintendent, adds 5% to every rate and cap.

Collecting

At a quarter full a coin appears above the miniature and the building counts as ready. At the cap the coin grows and gains a halo: full, nothing more accrues. Click the coin, or select the building and press Collect. The whole-dollar part of the bank flies to your counter, and you earn 1 rank XP for every $100 collected (fractions carry over).

Shift-click any cell to collect every ready bank within three cells of it. From town rank 3, Yardmaster, the Town panel's Collect all button and the Collect all on the while-you-were-away sheet empty every bank in the town at once, and the Town rail button badges the ready count.

While you were away

On every load the game settles what happened since you left, in every region you own:

• Banks accrue for the time you were gone, up to 24 hours per bank and never past the cap.
• Builds, upgrades, ring clearings and surveys finish by the wall clock. Scaffolds you left running are buildings when you return.
• The active region also replays up to two hours of game time in a fast catch-up (150 game days), so trains stopped, prices drifted and telegrams arrived while you were out. Telegrams that need a decision wait for you.

If you were gone a minute or more, a While you were away sheet sums it up: dollars banked, trains served, builds finished, surveys back, with a Collect all button once you have the rank for it. Shorter gaps settle silently.

While you play, the regions you are not looking at keep banking too, refreshed every five seconds, so a trip to another town never costs the one you left.

The daily ledger

Income per game day, shown beside Dollars in the status bar and broken down in the Town panel, is the live half: stopping and services, cargo bought and sold, tariffs, resident rent, Main Street business, hands' spending, County Fair tickets, office leases and loan repayments, less upkeep. Upkeep is 0.4% of every building's cost plus one dollar per resident, per game day, scaled like the rest. Bank collections appear in the breakdown as banks on the day you collect.

Trains are the live half of the town. They arrive from the edge of the region, take a platform, pay their fees, sell what their home town exports, buy what it imports, stay a while and leave. Every visit nudges how much their freight line trusts you.

Arrivals

How often trains appear depends on you. The base rate is 0.9 per game day, plus 0.6 for every star of renown, plus 4 times your traffic bonus (each Telegraph Office adds 0.15, so 0.6 per hall), plus 0.4 per line office and 0.5 per active contract. A Union Depot multiplies the whole thing by 1.25, and by 2.5 in Gold Country. During a weekly Cattle Drive window traffic is ×1.5. At most 16 trains are in the region at once.

Which freight line sends the train is weighted by trust (1 + trust / 50) and by the region's bias toward its home trains. The Golden Gate Express only appears once you have a Union Depot.

Platforms and the queue

A train heads for a free platform: a Rail Depot or the Trading Post with an empty side. If none is free it holds down the line; the Freight panel shows the days waited. If two trains are already holding, further arrivals divert elsewhere, which counts against your renown. A train that waits three game days gives up: its line loses 6 trust and your renown takes the hit. A train that waited more than a day before mooring also costs 2 trust per whole day waited.

What a train pays

Everything happens the moment a train stops. It pays its stopping fee, buys provisions if you have a Coaling Yard (60 base, scaled by train size; two coaling yards add 30%), and six times in ten pays for repairs if you have a Roundhouse (150 base, scaled by train). All of these are multiplied by your water efficiency and by the live factor of 0.06. A standing contract discounts fees 15%.

Then it trades. For each good in its load that your policy says Buy, you pay 65% of the effective price (less 5 points per Mercantile, which lowers what you pay), limited by storage room and your dollars. Then it buys what its home town imports, at 105% of the price plus 5 points per Mercantile, splitting its load across the goods you have. Spare space it fills on spec with anything else you sell, at 85% plus margin, most valuable first. If you have a Weigh House, every unit traded in either direction pays 1.$5 of tariff per line. The train then stays for its service time, shortened 15% or 30% by an upgraded platform, and departs.

Loads and fees are listed before the 0.06 live factor: in play a Wagon Train carries 5 units and pays about $17 to stop. Hand counts are not scaled; they are the visitors who eat, sleep and spend.

The freight lines

Seven freight lines, each with a home town that sets what its trains bring and what they want. The Freight panel shows every line's trust out of 100, whether it keeps an office, any loan outstanding, and the goods it brings and buys.

Trust, offices and contracts

Every line starts at 40 trust. Each train served adds 2, or 3 if you have a Roundhouse, less 2 for every whole game day it waited once the wait passed a day. At 75 the line opens a permanent office in the town: regular traffic (+0.4 to the arrival rate) and an $80 lease per game day, scaled. A Freight Contract telegram offers ten days of extra trains from one house for a 15% fee discount; signing it adds 10 trust and two trains at once. Trust also weights which line shows up next and sets your loan rate.

Loans

With a Savings Bank, the Freight panel gains a Lend button per line. The minimum loan is $500 and a line carries one at a time. The rate is 25% minus a tenth of the line's trust: 21% at 40 trust, 17.5% at 75, 15% at 100. Principal plus interest is repaid in ten equal daily parts. Each day there is a chance of default equal to (100 − trust) × 0.025%; a default writes off what is left and costs the line 15 trust; a loan repaid in full adds 8. Loans are player money and are never scaled down.

The Market

Twelve goods, each with a base price. Every game day a price drifts up to 6% at random and reverts 8% of the way toward base, staying between half and 1.8 times base. The region's bias multiplies some goods (iron ore and rails +40% in Arizona Territory, for instance). A Trade Boom triples one good for four days; a Market Glut halves one for four days. The Market panel shows every good with its picture, the current price, your stock, a Buy / Sell toggle and a broker button that sells your whole stock of a good to a passing broker at half price.

Storage and production

The Trading Post holds 50 units and each Freight House 200. Homestead Fields add 4 wheat a day; an Iron Foundry turns 6 iron ore into 3 iron rails a day (half again as much rail in the Colorado Rockies). Residents eat 0.15 wheat each per day, fruit if the wheat runs out. Survey cargo and daily crates go into the same stock; whatever does not fit is brokered at half price on the spot.

Water is a budget, not a resource you store. The status bar shows what your buildings draw over what you supply. Stay under it and nothing happens; go over it and everything slows down.

Supplying and drawing

The Trading Post supplies 10. A Wind Pump supplies 6 (7.5 at level 2, 9 at level 3, rounded in the total). A Mountain Flume supplies 25 (31 and 38 upgraded). Every other building draws between 1 and 6, and the Union Depot draws 15. A building under construction already draws its water. The Build panel's cards show the draw as pips so you can see the cost before you place.

Shortage

When draw exceeds supply the town runs at an efficiency of supply divided by draw, never below 30%. Efficiency multiplies stopping fees, provisions and repair income, resident rent, hands' spending and the quality-of-life score, and a shortage knocks 0.6 off the renown target every day it lasts. The water readout turns red with a down-triangle, the miniatures take on a grey cast, the context bar tells you, and the log reminds you every three days. Raise a Wind Pump or build a Mountain Flume.

Droughts

A Drought telegram runs every Wind Pump dry for three game days. Flumes are unaffected. The condition strip counts the days down and the water readout goes amber. In Arizona Territory droughts come twice as often, which is the region's way of telling you to build a flume early.

Telegrams

Every four to eight game days (the first between days 4 and 7) a telegram arrives and pauses the simulation until you read it. Most just happen; two ask for a decision. Their weights are shaped by the region, and some only occur once your town is big enough.

Weights are relative draws from the pool of telegrams your level allows. Reading a telegram counts toward the Incoming Telegram mission.

Outlaws, in detail

One Jailhouse halves raid losses (35% of stock becomes 17.5%); two jailhouses stop raids entirely. In New Mexico, where raids are twice as likely, two jailhouses are not optional. A raid also shakes the camera and raises the red condition strip for a few seconds.

Two kinds of people are in the town. Visitors are the hands of stopped trains: they are counted on the status bar as in town, they need beds and meals, and they spend. Residents are permanent: they need homes, they pay rent, and they only come when the town feels like a place to live.

Quality of life

The Town panel shows a ring and four rows. Each row is a coverage from 0 to 100%, and the score is their weighted sum, multiplied by your water efficiency:

• Food (35%): food capacity over everyone in town. The Trading Post feeds 10, a Saloon 30, Homestead Fields 40.
• Beds for hands (20%): visitor beds over visitors. The Trading Post has 6, a Boarding House 20 (25 and 30 upgraded).
• Entertainment (25%): forty people per venue. Venues are the Opera House, the Main Street and the County Fair. With nobody in town, one venue counts as full coverage and none as half.
• Health care (20%): 100% with an Infirmary; without one, 70%, falling to 40% once more than 20 people are in town.

The score drives three things: how much visitors spend, whether residents arrive or leave, and 2.4 of the 5 points of your renown target. The Good Stop mission asks for 70%.

Visitors

Every game day each visitor spends about $6 times (0.5 + 0.6 food + 0.4 beds + 0.9 fun) times efficiency, doubled during a festival and scaled by the live factor. A well-kept town with an Opera House earns roughly three times as much from its hands as a bare one.

Residents

Residents need homes: Frame Houses hold 15 (19 and 23 upgraded). Each game day, if there is a free home and the quality-of-life score is above 55%, there is a 70% chance that new residents arrive: at least one, and otherwise 8% of the visitors in town times the score, doubled with a Schoolhouse, and multiplied by the region's growth bias (twice in Oregon Country; none ever settle in the Colorado Rockies). If the score falls below 35%, 5% of your residents leave every day. Stockyard fever without an Infirmary sends a quarter of them away at once.

Residents pay $6 of rent each per game day, times efficiency, times the region's rent bias (+30% in Oregon Country), scaled; with a Main Street they add $3 each of business a day, doubled in a festival. They eat 0.15 wheat each per day. Each resident adds a dollar of upkeep.

The status bar's Residents readout shows residents over homes. Having any residents at all adds 0.4 to the renown target, and towns of 10 and 50 are mission goals; the Town Planner achievement counts your peak at one town.

Renown is a number from 0 to 5 that drifts toward a target every game day. Town level is a threshold on building count and renown together. Levels open new building tiers and new regions, and once reached they never fall.

How renown moves

Each game day the target is computed and your renown moves 12% of the way toward it. The target is the sum of:

• 2.4 × the quality-of-life score;
• up to 1.0 for variety: the number of different building kinds you have built, out of 14;
• 0.4 if anyone lives in the town;
• 0.5 per Grand Hotel, up to 1.0;
• 0.3 with a Union Depot;
• minus 0.25 per train recently turned away or diverted (fading by a quarter each day), up to 1.2;
• minus 0.8 while you are in debt; minus 0.6 while water is short.

Telegrams move it directly: the surveyor adds 0.5 (1.0 with a Grand Hotel); stockyard fever without an Infirmary costs 0.5; stranded settlers add 0.5 or cost 0.1 or 0.15. Renown feeds back into traffic, 0.6 arrivals per day per star.

The five tiers

The building count excludes the Trading Post and anything still under construction, and adds half a building for every upgrade level above 1. A level is reached when both numbers are met; the town then celebrates, you earn 100 rank XP, and the Build panel's next shelf unlocks. Region unlocks look at the best level you have reached in any region.

Every town starts on a 7×5 plot of 35 cells around its Trading Post. The rest of the region grid is unclaimed: dim, hatched, overgrown with brush. You buy it one ring at a time, and workers clear it on a timer.

How rings work

Click any unclaimed cell, or press Expand in the Town panel's Territory block. The confirm shows the next ring's cells, cost and time; Clear pays the dollars and starts the clock, Clear now pays the dollars and skips the clock for Gold Dust at the usual rate. Rings are cleared one at a time, in order, whichever cell you clicked. While a ring clears, a band sweeps along the plot's edge, a timer sits under it, and Next up lists it.

Ring k costs 4,000 × 2.2^(k−1) dollars and takes 15 min × 1.9^(k−1), half again as long in far regions. A ring grows the plot by one cell on each side the grid allows; on the wide home grid the width grows every ring and the height every other ring, which is why the plot goes 7×5, 9×7, 11×7, 13×9, 15×9.

Skip prices are for a ring started from scratch; the game charges for the minutes actually left. The Territory block in the Town panel reads "Starting plot" before the first ring, then "Ring k of 4" on a 15×9 grid (of 5 on 17×9, 15×11 and 17×11; of 6 on 19×11).

Clearing your first ring is a Founding mission (Clear Your First Ring, $1,500, 5 Dust); ring 4 is a Town mission (Room to Grow, $12,000, 8 Dust). The Landholder achievement counts rings cleared across every town you own: 2, 10 and 30.

When no empty cell inside the plot touches the town, the Build panel's tier heads say Needs more plot. That is your cue.

There are eight regions, each with its own country, its own economy bias and its own town. You start on the Kansas Plains. The others are visible from day one on the map, with their locks. Unlocking one is a survey in itself: a new trading post on a new plot.

One purse, many towns

Dollars are shared across every region. Each town keeps its own name and register, grid, plot, buildings, renown, level, stock, freight lines and log. Banks fill in every region at once. Gold Dust, rank, missions, achievements, charts and the Almanac belong to you, not to a town.

To travel, open the Map, pick an owned region and press Travel. The new town's banks and timers are settled as you arrive. The panel stays open on return so you can hop straight back.

Unlocking a region

Each region asks for three things: a town level you have reached in any region, a dollar price, and for some, charts of that region brought home by surveys. Arizona Territory can also be opened at once for 60 Gold Dust, and Gold Country by the Region Pass; the pass opens every region. The map's lock text tells you exactly what is missing.

"Timers ×1.5" means builds, upgrades and ring clearings in that region take half again as long. A line multiplier weights how often its trains choose that region.

What the pacing expects

The prices are set for a founder who plays three sessions of about fifteen minutes a day and taps the banks each time. On that pace the tuning run reached Arizona Territory on day 2, the Colorado Rockies on day 4, Utah Territory on day 9, New Mexico on day 14, Texas on day 21, Oregon Country on day 27 and Gold Country on day 36, with level 4 arriving around day 22. Play more often and the banks cap you; play less and nothing is lost, the timers just finish without you.

Each new town starts the same way: a trading post, 7×5 of plot, tier 1 open, and the tutorial's three instant builds already spent. The new town's name comes from the region's own list; rename it in the Town panel if you like.

A survey is a party sent from your depots to any region, locked or not. It takes real time, from half an hour to a full day, and comes back with cargo, usually a chart, and sometimes Gold Dust, dollars or a discovery for the Almanac.

Slots and requirements

You need an active Rail Depot. You have one slot, a second with a Telegraph Office and a third with a Roundhouse; three is the most. Only one party can be out to a given region at a time. Launching costs dollars up front; the party sets out from whatever town you launched it from, and the haul comes home to the town you are at when you debrief.

Cost is $400 plus 200 per step out from home. Return brings hands home early at 1 Dust per eight minutes left; the price shown is for a party that has only just left.

The debrief

When the party is back the Surveys rail badge lights, Next up says Debrief, and a toast offers it. Pressing Debrief rolls the haul and plays it as a row of chips:

• Cargo, always: 20 to 80 units split evenly across the region's three goods, into your current town's stock. Whatever does not fit is brokered at half price.
• A chart, 60% of the time, and guaranteed on every third claimed run to that region (the 3rd, 6th, 9th). Three charts fully chart a region; Colorado Rockies, New Mexico, Texas and Gold Country need one, one, two and three to unlock.
• Gold Dust, 35% of the time: 1 to 8, weighted toward the low end.
• A discovery, 45% of the time: a train, people or keepsake from that region's pool, drawn common 6 : rare 3 : epic 1, and always something you have not found yet while any remain.
• Dollars, 20% of the time: five to fifteen minutes of your total town rate.

Every debrief pays 20 rank XP and counts toward the Surveyor achievement; charts count toward Cartographer. The panel keeps your last five debriefs.

Every region is laid out the same way: open land, then one long row of trackside, then the right of way. The Trading Post stands one row above it, and nothing can be built on the right of way.

Trackside is kept for the buildings that work with trains. Rail Depot must stand on it. Freight House, Coaling Yard, Weigh House, Mercantile, Roundhouse and Union Depot may stand there too, or inland. Anything else is refused, and the hint under your cursor says why.

What the ground gives

A building on the right ground does more of what it does, and its bank earns a smaller part of the same bonus: 30% of it.

Each region has its own ground

The land along the line differs from region to region, and it never changes once you have seen it. These are the shares of each region's open land.

A building tier now needs two things: the town level it always needed, and the discovery that opens its era. Open Eras from the rail to see what you know and what comes next.

How study works

• One study runs at a time, and you pay for it when it starts.
• It runs on a real timer, like a build, and it finishes while the tab is closed. With notifications on in Settings, you get one when it does.
• Gold Dust can finish a study at the same price as skipping a build.
• What you have studied is never lost, and it holds in every town you found.

Almost every building hires workers. The Trading Post's own households supply 18, which covers the whole opening, and every resident after that is one more pair of hands. The readout beside your residents shows townsfolk at work against jobs on offer.

A building short of workers runs at its share: half its workers means half its output and half its bank. A scaffold hires nobody until it opens. The Trading Post and houses hire nobody at all.

The hiring order

When there are not enough townsfolk to go round, the groups are served in this order. Open Workers from the readout to move a group up or down; Reset puts them back.

No one settles in Colorado Rockies, so 60 hired hands from elsewhere work it on top of the usual households.

Word of a strike first arrives about 5 game days after founding, and then 7 to 12 game days after each bust ends. Press O or open the Gold Rush from the rail.

Each strike can be played two ways. Each is a rush with a price and a length in game days, and when the rush ends a bust follows it. Only one runs at a time. Nothing stops while a strike waits for you.

• Letting a strike go by costs nothing: no rush, no price and no bust.
• Some choices ask for a stake, paid at once and sized to what the whole town earns in that many minutes.
• Check the bust before you commit. It is shown beside the rush.

Missions are chapter goals for the town you are at; achievements are lifetime milestones across your whole career. Both pay out only when you come back and press Claim, and the Missions rail button counts everything waiting.

Missions

Fifty missions in seven chapters. Three are active at a time: the next unclaimed mission of each open chapter, in chapter order, with a fourth slot from town rank 4. A chapter opens when its first mission's prerequisite is met. Progress is checked a few times a second as you play; a completed mission toasts you with a Claim button, and claiming flies the dollars and Gold Dust to the status bar. Altogether the missions pay $344,600, 411 Gold Dust and 4,980 rank XP.

Build and level goals count the town you are at; region, chart and Almanac goals count your profile. Drive Season needs the weekly Cattle Drive window: 48 hours every seven days, counted from when your profile was created, starting with the second week.

Achievements

Twenty-four lifetime achievements, each with a bronze, silver and gold tier. Bronze pays 5 Gold Dust, silver 15, gold 40, and the nine hardest golds pay 60: 1,600 Gold Dust in all. They track your whole profile, every region included, and one tier is claimed per press of Claim.

Two systems reward simply showing up: a daily streak that resets at local midnight, and a town rank that grows with everything you do and is yours across every region.

The daily reward

Once per calendar day, in your local time, a reward is claimable: from the sheet that opens when you start, from the bell in the status bar, or from the Next up strip. Claim on consecutive days and the streak climbs through a seven-day loop, then starts again at day 1 with the streak count still rising.

Miss a single day and nothing happens: claiming the day after continues the streak. Miss two days or more and the streak is broken; your next claim starts again at day 1, unless you repair it for 5 Gold Dust. The repair offer appears on the daily sheet for 48 hours from the moment the streak broke (the start of the second missed day). Daily claims count toward the Regular achievement.

Town rank

Rank is experience, earned profile-wide and never lost. You gain 1 XP for every $100 collected from banks, 5 for every train served, 20 for every survey debriefed, 15 for every first discovery, 100 for every town level reached, and the XP a mission lists. Each promotion pays Gold Dust equal to ten times the new rank and celebrates across the screen with the new badge. That badge then sits in the status bar's ring, which fills toward the next rank; hover it for the exact figures and the next grant.

Ranks 6 to 10 are 3,000 XP apart. The three rank achievements, Rising Settler, Leading Settler and Legend of the West, pay out alongside the promotions.

The Almanac (R) is your collection: fifty-two things to find, each with two lines of story, shown dark behind a lock until you log them, then in color. Click any card for its full picture and story. Sets pay Gold Dust and a title.

Trains

Twenty-four trains across the seven lines. The twelve standard trains are logged the first time you serve one of that line and class, from the Comstock Freight Train to the Golden Gate Express Train. Six notable trains appear when a line's tenth train stops at the town you are at: the Anvil of the Comstock, Prairie Falcon, Green Drover, Harvest Moon, Storm Runner and Deep Salt. The other six come home with surveys: Ore-Mother from the Kansas Plains or Arizona Territory, Blue Shrike from Arizona Territory, Brine Queen from Utah Territory, Ember of Santa Fe from New Mexico, Pride of Oregon from Oregon Country, and the epic Glory of the Golden Gate from Gold Country.

Peoples

Twelve peoples of the West, written as the people they were, with their own names, trade and history. Six are met by serving five trains of a line: Kanza Traders (Comstock), Homesteading Women (Willamette), Akimel O'odham Farmers (Gateway), Shoshone Traders (Salt Lake), Diné Weavers (Santa Fe) and Tejano Vaqueros (Lone Star). The Chinese Merchants step off the first express train. Five are met only by surveys: Ute Diplomats in the Colorado Rockies, Chinese Railroad Builders in Utah Territory, Pueblo Potters in New Mexico, Black Cowboys in Texas and the epic Miwok Elders in Gold Country.

Keepsakes

Sixteen keepsakes, two per region, surveys only. The second keepsake of each region is rarer than the first; the Lost Engineer's Logbook, the Juneteenth Bell and The Pacific Survey are epic. A discovery you already hold counts again on its card but is only drawn when the region has nothing new left for you.

Sets

A set completes the moment its last item is logged; the Gold Dust and the title are granted at once and a toast tells you. The Complete Set mission pays a further 25 Dust for your first.

Sixteen sets, 440 Gold Dust in all. Every first discovery also pays 15 rank XP and counts toward Collector.

Gold Dust is the premium currency. It has its own color wherever it appears, you start with 20, and the game pays it out steadily for playing. It buys time, never access: every building, region, mission and achievement is reachable with dollars and patience.

Earning it

• Missions: 2 to 50 each, 411 across all fifty. The tutorial chapter alone pays 35.
• Achievements: 5, 15 and 40 per tier (60 for the hardest golds), 1,600 in all.
• Daily reward: 5, 10 and 25 on days 3, 6 and 7 of the streak.
• Surveys: 1 to 8 about one debrief in three.
• Almanac sets: 20 to 60 each, 440 in all.
• Promotions: ten times the new rank, 540 from Settler to Builder of the West.

Spending it

• Skip any timer: builds, upgrades, ring clearings and surveys, at 1 Dust per eight minutes left, minimum 1.
• Open Arizona Territory now: 60 Dust instead of level 2 and $90,000.
• Repair a daily streak: 5 Dust within 48 hours of the break.
• Relief wagon: 10 Dust for 30 minutes of your whole town's rate in dollars, delivered now, from the Store's Boosts shelf.

The Store

Prices are in US dollars. Gold Dust is a game currency with no cash value and cannot be refunded or transferred. Dollar boosts and the Relief wagon are measured against the rate of the town you are at. Every purchase is an ordinary payment, and the price is shown before you pay.

Banners

A banner dresses the town: the lit rim around the platform, the lights along its walkways and boarding ramps, the line around each cell and the Trading Post's glow take its colors, while every building keeps its own picture. Choose one under Settings > Banner: a preview strip shows the active banner and a card for each of the eight. Standard is everyone's. The six region banners (Arizona Territory, Colorado Rockies, Utah Territory, New Mexico, Texas and Oregon Country) come as a set from the Store, or one at a time for a banner token, the day-seven daily reward. Founder's Brass comes with the Founder's Banner. Your choice is saved with the profile, and nothing about the game changes with it.

A four-hour tier-4 build skips for 30 Dust; at the 140 pouch that is about a dollar. That is the whole monetization: patience is free, haste costs a little, and nobody is locked out.

Your profile

Everything you own is one profile: every region's town, your purse, Gold Dust, rank, missions, achievements, charts, Almanac, entitlements and settings. It is saved in this browser's local storage every ten seconds while you play and again the moment you switch tabs, hide the window or leave the page. One browser holds one profile. Clearing the browser's site data removes it, so export now and then.

Because timers run on the clock, the save is not a snapshot of a paused world. Open the game a day later and the profile is settled forward: banks filled to their caps, scaffolds finished, surveys back, the active town replayed through up to two hours of game time.

Export and import

In Settings > Save data, Export save writes your whole profile as text into the box below the buttons; copy it anywhere safe. Import save reads a profile pasted into that box and replaces the one in this browser after a confirm. That is how you move to another computer without an account.

Abandon and reset

Abandon this town starts a fresh town in the current region; your rank, Gold Dust, other regions and everything profile-wide stay. Reset profile erases everything, after a double confirm. New profile on the title screen does the same.

Cloud saves

Sign in from the Sign in lozenge on the title band or from Settings > Account:

• You sign in with an email and password (at least ten characters) from the title screen. No third-party sign-in.
• Creating an account hands you a recovery phrase of ten words, shown once. Save it before you dismiss the sheet: it is one of two ways back in without your password. The other is Forgot your password? on the sign-in tab, which emails a link good for 30 minutes to set a new one; either route signs out every other device and issues a fresh phrase.
• One cloud save per account holds the whole profile. The game pushes twenty seconds after any change, at once when you switch region, buy, or claim a mission or achievement, and when you leave the page.
• Opening the game on a second device pulls the newer save. If both the browser and the cloud have moved since the last sync, or you sign in on a browser that already holds a profile, a chooser shows both, with day, level, dollars, Gold Dust and regions, and you pick which to keep.
• A cloud glyph after the rank ring shows the sync state. Signing out leaves the local profile in place.

Notifications

The Notifications shelf offers a browser notification when a build, upgrade, survey or ring clearing finishes. Turning Notify me when something finishes on asks the browser for permission; once it is on, a Daily reward reminder (nine in the morning, local time) and Send a test notification appear under it. The chip beside the switch reads On, Off, Connecting, Blocked when the browser refused, Offline when the service cannot be reached, or Unavailable in a browser without push.

Devices

The Old West plays on desktop, tablet and phone, and needs WebGL. The reference layout is 1440×900; at 1180 and below the rail collapses to icons and the panel narrows. Current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari are supported.

Everything can be reached from the keyboard, and the keys reference is one press away on ?. Keys do nothing while you are typing in a field or while a dialog is open, apart from Esc.

Pointer

A four-pixel threshold separates a drag from a click, so a wobbly tap still counts as a tap. The camera stays inside the region grid inflated by six cells, slides aside when a panel would cover the town, and drifts gently on the title screen only.

Reading the screen

Status is never carried by color alone: the water readout adds a square or a down-triangle to its hue, trust bars carry a word, chips carry a shape. Body text in the game is 14 pixels or larger, numbers 16, labels 12. Every control is at least 32 pixels tall and shows a two-pixel ring when focused from the keyboard. Nothing flashes faster than three times a second.

Motion

Settings > Motion offers System, Reduced and Full. System follows your operating system's reduced-motion preference. Reduced keeps every tween under 120 milliseconds, drops the panel sweeps, the coin flights (dollars simply arrive), the camera drift and the bloom pulsing, and skips the boot sequence.

Performance

The world renders in WebGL and measures itself. Effects tier is Auto by default: the game steps down from High to Medium to Low when it falls under 45 frames a second, trimming particle counts, bloom quality, wakes and sparkle in that order. Pin a tier yourself if you prefer, and turn on Show performance readout to see frames per second and the tier in the context bar. Sound is procedural, with separate switches and volumes for interface effects and the rail yard ambience; both respect a hidden tab.

Sizes

The screen is laid out for 1440×900 and works from 1180×700. A landscape tablet at 1024×768 gets the rail collapsed to icons; on a phone (portrait, 360 pixels and up) the rail becomes a bottom bar of Build, Town, Map, Missions and More, the panels open as sheets you can drag down, the status-bar menu holds the daily reward and the other readouts, and the world pans by drag and zooms by pinch.

Gold Dust (Dust)

The premium currency, always in its own color. Earned by play, offered in the Store, spent on time: skips, early returns, one early region, a streak repair.

Bank, till

A building's own store of dollars, filling by the real minute up to a cap. A coin above the building means it is at least a quarter full; a halo means it is full.

Chart

Proof of a survey to a region. Three charts fully chart it; some regions need one, two or three to unlock.

Clearing

The timer on the next ring of plot after you have paid for it. Graders clear it; Gold Dust skips it.

Town rank

Your profile-wide level from 1, Settler, to 10, Builder of the West, built from XP. Ranks 3, 4 and 5 grant powers.

Condition

The strip under the status bar during a drought, a festival, a raid or an outbreak.

Cattle Drive window

Forty-eight hours every seven days from your profile's creation, from the second week on, with traffic ×1.5. One mission and one achievement count trains served inside it.

Debrief

Opening a returned survey's haul. Nothing is rolled until you press it.

Telegram

An event. Most simply happen; two ask you to decide. The simulation waits until you have read it.

Dollars ($)

The ordinary currency, one purse across every region.

Efficiency

Supply over draw when water is short, floored at 30%. It scales fees, rent, spending and quality of life.

Far region

New Mexico, Texas, Oregon Country and Gold Country, where builds, upgrades and clearings take 1.5× as long.

Game day

Forty-eight seconds of real time at 1×, and only while the game is open. Trains, trade, residents, prices, renown and telegrams run on game days.

Boarding ramp

The ramp a stopped train lowers to its platform. Two to five figures walk it: hands, passengers, traders, a marshal, porters with a baggage cart.

Level, tier

A town's rank from L1 Trading Post to L5 Queen City, set by building count and renown together. Building tiers 1 to 4 open at levels 1 to 4.

Live economy

Everything trains, visitors and residents pay in the moment, scaled by a factor of 0.06 so that the banks lead.

Next up

The strip under the toasts with the three soonest timers.

Plot, ring

The cells you may build on, starting 7×5 around the Trading Post and growing one ring at a time to the whole region grid.

Quality of life

The weighted coverage of food, beds, entertainment and health care, times efficiency. It drives spending, residents and renown.

Platform

The Rail Depot or the Trading Post, with the empty cell beside it where a train pulls up. A platform with no empty side is blocked.

Rate, cap

What a bank earns per real minute and the most it will hold: 180, 240 or 360 minutes of rate by level.

Region

One of eight parts of the West, each with its own country, bias and town.

Renown

Zero to five stars, drifting daily toward a target set by quality of life, variety, residents, grand hotels and how well trains were served.

Scaffold

A building still on its build or upgrade timer: its miniature dimmed under a hatched frame, a ring and a countdown.

Skip

Finishing any timer now for Gold Dust: one Dust per eight minutes remaining, rounded up.

Trust

A freight line's opinion of your town from 0 to 100, starting at 40. It sets how often they come, when they open an office and what they pay to borrow.

Visitors

The hands of stopped trains, counted as in town. They need beds and meals and they spend.

Water

What buildings draw and wind pumps, tanks and flumes supply. Run short and everything slows.