SPAN OF CONTROL

You run this frontier colony from three days away by telegraph wire, so the only order that actually matters is the standing rule you wrote before you stopped watching.

Colony Sim PC (Windows) Keyboard & Mouse Early Access · $24.99 Concept · 2026-08-10

Four years. One rulebook. No hands on the wheel.

The World

The Concourse Company runs a rail line into badlands it hasn't finished naming. You're the administrator, hired out of the capital office, and you've never set foot on the land you run — everything you know arrives by wire or by whatever the weekly train brings back. The tone sits somewhere between a company ledger and the mess underneath it: quotas, telegraph forms, a supply schedule, and colonists whose small rule violations are the only part of the world that reads as human.

Core Loop

The Daily Loop

The Ledger flags a red entry. A colonist named Osric diverted three sacks of grain to the smithy instead of the granary, because his protocol says "resupply the nearest understocked building from the nearest full stockpile," and this week, technically, the grain store qualified. You spend a Directive to move it back by hand, or rewrite the rule and accept the fix won't apply until it's next evaluated. You pick the rewrite. You watch to see if it holds.

Core Loop

The Weekly Loop

Monday, the supply train pulls in. Charter Standing updates against last week's quota and how many Directives you burned. The budget resets — three orders, this early. You get a short window before the line's price triples for the week, then the game speeds up and you mostly watch. If the week runs clean, you've bought yourself a quiet one.

Where it gets boring in hour three: a rulebook that's airtight for twelve colonists and two resources goes quiet fast — the same plateau that hit Timberborn once food and water were solved. Protocol slots don't grow with population, only with sub-foremen paid for out of quota output, so a rulebook built for thirty colonists starts failing at sixty as traits combine in ways your original rules never anticipated. Getting good enough to stop firefighting is what hands you a colony that's outgrown your rules.

Key systems

Interlocking Systems

📋

Standing Protocols

A visual if/then rule builder — about a dozen conditions and a dozen actions at tenure start, more unlocked as sub-foremen join. This is how the colony runs when you're not looking.

📡

The Directive Budget

Real-time orders draw from a weekly budget of three and triple in price once the telegraph line locks. Spending one is a real decision, not a reflex.

🎭

Interpretation Drift

Four launch traits bias how a colonist executes an ambiguous rule, deterministically. A repeated failure is a design signal you can act on, not bad luck.

📖

The Ledger

A searchable log tracing every bad outcome back to the exact rule-and-colonist pair that caused it — no staring at a colonist walk in circles.

⛈

Silent Weeks

Seasonal telegraph outages drop the Directive budget to zero for five to seven days. No manual fallback. This is the week your rulebook is actually tested.

📊

Charter Standing

The single score that governs the job. It falls the more you lean on manual Directives — the company reads hands-on control as a lack of trust in your own systems.

💼

Sub-Foremen

Hired at population milestones, each holds two protocol slots and one blind spot they refuse to write rules for. Delegating just moves the problem up a level.

Key features — copyable for your pitch deck

Key Features

Direct Control Is Metered, Not Free
A weekly Directive budget prices itself up mid-week, so the skill under test is writing rules that hold while you're not watching — not clicking fast enough to keep pace.
Every Failure Is Traceable
Colonist temperament biases how ambiguous protocols execute, and the Ledger traces every bad outcome back to the exact rule-and-colonist pair responsible.
Hands-On Play Is Penalized
Charter Standing, the one score that matters, drops the more you lean on manual Directives — inverting the genre's usual mark of mastery.
The Late Game Gets Harder, Not Emptier
Silent Weeks and rising quotas keep outpacing your rulebook as the colony grows, answering the "nothing left to do" complaint aimed at the genre's current biggest launch.
Delegating Doesn't End the Problem
Sub-foremen hold their own protocol slots and their own blind spots, so growing the colony means delegating the delegation itself.

Risk register

Honest Risks & Mitigations

Risk	Type	Mitigation
Rule builder feels like the chore it replaces	Design	Cap starting vocabulary at 12 conditions / 12 actions; playtest for a working protocol under two minutes
Crowded genre (RimWorld, Timberborn, Dwarf Fortress)	Market	Lead every trailer beat with the Directive-scarcity hook — it doesn't describe those games
Interpretation drift balloons into a behavior sim	Scope	Small tunable modifier table on existing actions; prototype with only 4 traits
Directive budget tuning is a knife-edge	Design	Tune against real playtest data from weeks 4–5, not designer guesswork
Writing rules blind intimidates newcomers	Design	Diegetic first week under full manual control before protocols are introduced

6-week prototype path

Prototype Plan

Week 1Core simulation skeleton — six colonists, one resource, a day/night tick, manual orders only. Colonists visibly thrive or starve on manual play.

Week 2Build the protocol editor and wire it to run colonists unattended. A written rule holds for three in-game days without input.

Week 3Add the Directive budget, weekly telegraph tick, and first pass on Charter Standing. One full week playable start to finish.

Week 4Add colonist traits and interpretation drift on 2–3 actions, plus the Ledger. Two colonists visibly execute the same rule differently.

Week 5Add the first Silent Week and a second resource to create real protocol conflicts. At least one conflict traceable in the Ledger.

Week 6Vertical slice: a full first in-game year — tutorial week, ~8 regular weeks, one Silent Week — with win/loss states wired and a rough art pass. Five external playtesters finish a year and can say why they won or lost.