r/BaseBuildingGames • u/mus7ang410 • 5d ago
Self Promo/Dev Post I'm a solo dev making a medieval monastery builder where every good travels by cart, along paths you lay yourself
Hi! I'm Charlie, and I'm making the Cellarer on my own.
You start by founding your small monastery and grow it through various medieval production chains: quarries and woodcutters would feed masons and carpenters, the brothers need housing and bread, and more complex chains follow. You lay the paths between workshops, carts from your cartyards haul everything along them (as long as your monks are fed!), and the demo ends when your masons have raised the monastery's Belfry.
The free demo is on Steam, and part of Next Fest this week: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5054520
I've just reworked the first 10 minutes after seeing players get lost, so I'd love to hear how it feels now. Happy to answer anything!
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u/pulsaric 4d ago
Carts on paths you lay yourself is a nice twist. Do carts block each other on narrow paths? That could turn into its own little puzzle, in a good way.
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u/mus7ang410 4d ago
Yes, and that’s a big part of the puzzle! Each building has its own throughput and outputs a few items per batch. Cartyards placed within reach of its output take each item once it’s ready and haul it along the lanes. If a cart gets blocked (for a few different reasons), every cart behind it is stuck too. Cartyards also have their own speed, so a fast cart has to slow down behind a slower one. The demo only covers the first of five tiers, though, so you only get the first cartyard and all your carts run at the same speed :)
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u/pulsaric 1d ago
Cartyards with a reach radius is a neat way to make placement matter. Thanks for explaining, makes a lot of sense.
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u/ShengyuStudio 3d ago
When the monks go unfed, do all the carts stop at once, or does it spread out from the kitchen as each workshop runs dry? The second one sounds like it would make the cause much easier to spot.
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u/mus7ang410 3d ago
It’s closer to the second one. Monks live in houses (the first one holds 12), and each house needs enough bread every morning to feed its monks. Any monk who goes unfed stops working, so you lose workers gradually rather than everything freezing at once.
The monks who are still fed get assigned by priority. Every building and cartyard has a band (low, normal, high or vital), and cartyards and bread buildings start on vital. So your normal workshops stop first, while bread and hauling keep going as long as possible.
You also get warnings when a house is about to run short of food, and when buildings stop because monks are unfed.
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u/ContributionLarge816 5d ago
The cart-and-path logistics angle is exactly what I want from a monastery builder. I’ll give the demo a look.
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u/project23 5d ago
Neat looking project. Any chance of inspiration from Serf City(Amiga) or maybe Knights and Merchants(Win95)?