Salt and Soil: A Frontier Family Sim is an upcoming turn-based historical strategy game that puts players in the shoes of a single family trying to survive and establish itself on the American frontier.
Developed by solo creator Roman, the game moves one year at a time. Each turn means deciding who works the fields, who receives an education, what gets built, what can be traded, and how limited resources should be distributed before winter arrives.
The developer cites RimWorld, Crusader Kings III, and Yellowstone as reference points. The settlement management draws from the constant scarcity of RimWorld, while the generational structure takes cues from Crusader Kings: when the head of the family dies, the campaign continues through an heir.
That heir inherits more than land and buildings. Debts, relationships, reputation, unresolved disputes, and earlier decisions all carry forward.
One Year at a Time
Every year presents a new management problem. Family members can be assigned to different jobs, but there are generally more tasks than available hands. Expanding the homestead, producing food, educating younger relatives, and trading all compete for the same limited workforce and supplies.
Choices can also have consequences that stretch across generations. A decision made by one family head may still affect their descendants decades later.
That is probably the part of Salt and Soil I find most intriguing. The death of a character is not a traditional failure state. It changes who is leading the family and what kind of problems the next generation inherits.
The Family Council
Each year concludes with a Family Council, one of the game’s central systems. Council scenes are generated from the current state of the campaign, including available supplies, the condition of the homestead, living family members, their relationships, the personality of the family head, and historical events occurring in the region.
This turns broader management problems into decisions involving specific people. During a food shortage, for example, the question may become who receives a ration.
Disputes between relatives can survive for years, while promises made during one council may become conditions the next generation has to deal with. The intention is for every campaign to gradually produce its own family chronicle.
Historical Events Continue Around You
Salt and Soil places the family’s story inside a historical timeline that cannot simply be rewritten by the player.
The recent playtest used Jamestown from 1607 to 1637 as its scenario. In the winter of 1609, the historical Starving Time creates a food crisis, forcing the family to decide how scarce rations are distributed.
In 1610, the household can choose whether to remain or relocate, selecting a new location on the map before moving the following year. In 1611, an arriving fleet brings additional people who can potentially join the settlement if there is enough food to support them.
The wider map contains 441 dated historical events, including wars, uprisings, town foundings, and shifts in political control. These events occur according to their year and region regardless of what the player’s family is doing.
The map itself was constructed using archival sources and historical GIS data, covering settlements, population changes, and evolving political borders.
First Steam Playtest Completed
The first public Steam playtest ran from August 13 to August 19, with 572 people receiving access.
Participants played through thirty years of the Jamestown scenario. According to the developer, the Family Council, historical events, and growth of the homestead were among the systems that received the strongest response.
One tester reportedly kept playing specifically to see the current family head die and discover who would inherit the homestead, which says quite a bit about how central succession could become to the experience. Roman is now working through feedback from the test ahead of the next public version.
Demo Coming in October
A Steam demo is planned for October 2026, with the full game currently expected to launch before the end of the year.
A new gameplay overview trailer shows the complete yearly loop, including work assignments, trade, Family Councils, and succession between generations.
Salt and Soil is also being localized into ten languages. Further down the line, Roman plans to explore custom maps, with Siberia intended as his first new setting, an “Eastern” counterpart to the American frontier.
