Build in layers. The build menu runs from below ground up to decor, one round chip for each part. Pick a thing, then click the land; the menu folds away while you place, and a chip or Place opens it again. Drag to paint floors, paths, pipes and fences. Modules and roofs take two clicks: one to stake out, one to build.
Walls, roofs, cladding. Click any cabin module with a window or door to fit it to the nearest outside wall (R switches walls). Click a module with roofing or cladding to cover the whole connected cabin. A roof only covers modules, so an L-shaped cabin gets two roofs that meet.
Underground. Go underground (B) digs. Tanks, septic, pipes, conduit and footings live down there. Surface things show as ghost outlines so you can route around them.
Inside. Double-click a cabin, press I, or use Go inside. You look into the room from the doorway, Animal Crossing style, with the near wall left off. Q and E, or the arrow keys, turn to face another wall. W A S D, or a drag, tilt and swing the camera; [ and ] move closer or back.
Light. Daylight comes in through the windows and crosses the room through the day, so a room with few openings is dim. Lamps throw soft pools of light once they have power. The stove, lamps and candles cast shadows, candles and the stove flicker and warm what is near them, and after dark the unlit corners go cool and blue. A polished floor reflects the room. Not every light needs power: there is an op shop fringed lamp and a salvaged anglepoise, and a kerosene hurricane lantern that needs no power at all.
Fitting out. Furniture sits on a 0.3 m grid at its real size. R turns a piece before you place it, and it keeps that facing as the view turns. Wall hangings go on whichever wall they face away from. Move (G) picks a piece up and puts it down again; Esc puts it back. Click a wall to fit a window or door; French doors are two full-height glass leaves. Stud walls from the Inside tab, plain or with a doorway, divide the room. Pick a decoration style (Bohemian, Thrift store, Basic retail, Japanese, Scandinavian, Cabin classic) to recolour the room and bring that style's staples to the top of the list.
Water and the dog. With the Hand (H), click the shower, the basin or the kitchen tap to run the water, and click again to turn it off. They need pressure from a tank and a pump. Put down a dog bed and a puppy turns up outside: a random breed that stays with your save. Pat it once a day and it grows to full size over five days.
Money. The build is a cost. Produce sells at the market, the grid pays a feed in, and the laptop inside (Hand, tap) opens a ledger where savings go into an index fund paying about 10% a year, half as price and half as monthly dividends. One day of play is a month, so a year passes in under an hour and you watch compounding do its work.
Using the pantry, letters and waste. The Use tool (U) spends what you have: castings and compost on a crop or bed, saved seed sown free. A mailbox at the gate brings letters with small paid jobs; tap it with the Hand to deliver. A service trench carries water and power in one tile. A flush toilet needs a sewer pipe to a septic, which fills over a year and is pumped out with the Hand for $380; a composting toilet needs nothing and gives compost when emptied. The Issues pill up top lists what the plan says is broken.
Target, research and milestones. Set a cabin budget on the start screen; the Build pill up top shows what it has cost against it, and a tap shows where the money went. The laptop (Hand, tap) has a research screen, key R: five cheap courses open the locked parts of the catalogue. Locked cards say what they need. Milestones tick off in the Bank panel. Garden beds get water from rain, water within 2 tiles, a tank within 6, or a tap, trough or drip line fed by the water main below ground (with a 12 V pump and power, or a windmill or ram pump).
Stock. Hens, ducks, geese, goats, pigs, sheep and a horse live by their houses and potter about. Each wants a fence within a few paces and water: a trough on the tank line, a farm pond, a fish pond or a dug dam. Buy fertile eggs, tap the incubator with the Hand to set them, and chicks go to the coop a day later. Wool, lambs, weaners, agistment, milk and eggs collect at the house with a sparkle; sell the pantry at the market or on the laptop.
Life. The Garden tab has Seeds and seedlings: tomatoes, pumpkins, salad, potatoes, garlic, a herb mix, wildflowers, a cottage flower bed, berry canes, a grape vine, apple, lemon and plum whips and a permaculture guild. They grow only with water (rain, a pressurised tank within hose reach, a pond, the creek or a dam), fruit when they are ready, sparkle, and give produce and seed when you tap them with the Hand. Herbs grow fastest within a few steps of the door, veg and berries within hose reach. An incubator with power hatches chicks every day into the coop (or ducklings into the duck house, which wants a pond); a chick is a laying hen the next day, one egg a day each. The hive makes honey while there are flowers within reach. The Yield pill by the budget keeps the ledger: produce value, eggs, honey, and the kWh and dollars sold to the grid once you have bought a grid connection in Power and heat.
Services. Solar runs the cabin by day; after dark only a battery (or a generator on conduit) keeps the lamps on, so an unpowered lamp stays dark and tells you why. A ground array or generator needs conduit to the cabin. Taps and the shower need a tank, a 12V pump and a pipe run; the pond only comes alive with a working pump. Pumps need power, so the sump pump drains a dam only when the solar is up.
Turning things. R turns whatever you are about to place: furniture faces one of four ways, and anything outside that is longer than it is wide (the firewood stack, the canoe, a bench) lies along or across. The ghost shows the turn before you click.
Land and water. The terrain tool shapes the whole landscape, site and surroundings alike; 4 × 4 moves a block at once, and the bush beyond the site can be steeper than the site. Water only ever flows into ground you have shaped, never into the natural lie of the land, and it leaks away from any tile with clearly lower open land beside it. Water joined to the creek flows; water cut off from it stands still. Raise a stretch of creek to ground level and it dries out. Dig below the topsoil and the strata show: quartz with gold glints in Tasmania, red clay over basalt in Japan, granite in Scandinavia. Water finds its level: cut a channel from the creek and it flows in, and stays even if you close the channel. Any hollow dug deep enough slowly fills with rain. Raise the ground to drain it, or set a windmill or a 12V sump pump beside it. Trees planted beyond the site are free. D moves the clock on three hours, so the sun and every shadow swing with it.
Peel. Peel roof (O) lifts the roof off so you can see floors, stoves and toilets inside.
Mouse. Scroll or pinch to zoom. Drag with the Hand tool, middle button, or right button to pan. Right click removes.
Touch. One finger taps to place, or drags to pan when nothing is picked. Two fingers pan, pinch to zoom and twist to turn the view. Tap with two fingers to undo and three to redo. Long press a thing to pick it up and move it. Hold a slot in the menu and drag it onto the land to stake it there. Swipe the menu down to see more of the land.
Terrain. The Terrain tool raises the land where you click and lowers it with right click (or the Lower button). Corners never differ by more than one step, so hills roll and digs bowl. Objects need level ground; trees and rocks do not.
Look around. Rotate the view with the arrows or Q and E. Seasons, rain, the radio and more sit behind the three dots beside zoom. The land beyond the dashed edge is scenery; it cannot be built on.
Sound. Music is a radio with three stations, all generated live: Smoko, a mellow jazz loop in the spirit of the classic SimCity scores; Sunday Strings, a string quartet and piano; and Tin Shed, a warm guitar band. C changes the station. Sounds are the weather, the creek, crickets on warm nights, frogs by the pond, owls, bees, the birds that are on screen, and small sounds for what you do. The radio and Sounds sit behind the three dots beside zoom, or press M and N.
Time and weather. A whole day and night lasts four minutes, and each day on site stands for a month, so the seasons turn every three days: long light in summer, long nights in winter. The clock in the top bar shows the day, the season and the time. Rain comes and goes on its own, snow in a snowy winter; W brings it on or clears it for a while. Windows glow after dark.
Keys. Press K, or the Keys button, for a card of the keys that matter where you are standing: outside, inside or underground. The short version: Q E turn, H is the Hand, G moves, X removes, R turns what you are placing, I goes in and out, D skips three hours.
Make the plan. Turns the site into checks, a bill of materials with indicative AUD prices, top-down drawings for surface and underground, and a build sequence. Print it to PDF.
Everything saves as you go. The disk saves a copy you can keep, send or open later.