Hello, and welcome to the Hearthroad devlog.
Hearthroad is an idle kingdom builder on one painted map. You place workshops on the land, link them with roads, and real carts carry every load between them: wood to the hearth, grain to the mill, bread to the homes. Nothing appears out of thin air. If a road is long or crowded, you see it on the map.
We started building on 25 October 2026, and a lot has happened since. So this devlog catches up one build day at a time: one numbered devlog, one idea, shown in the game, with every change of that day in its patch notes at the end. Devlog #1 is the first build.
Build on the land, link it dot to dot
A building stands on the land it works. Click a forest and build a Woodcutter's Hut on it. Every card has dots along its edges: drag a road from one dot to another and the two are linked. As soon as the road is down, the first cart sets off with its wood.
Every cart carries a real load
This is what the first build was about, on 26 October. Each cart picks up a real load and takes it to where that good runs short. Porters pull handcarts of planks and meat between the Sawmill, the Warehouse and the Village Hall, and when a road gets busy the goods wait their turn: the 4 and the 5 on the road are loads queuing to get through.
That makes roads matter. A short road between two busy workshops keeps them fed; a long one, or one every cart has to share, holds them back. Laying out a village is mostly laying out its roads.
From hamlet to kingdom, on one map
It starts with one hearth in an empty valley. The same map grows into a village, then into a kingdom of hundreds of buildings, with no change of screen and no second map. Zoom out and the cards become small round emblems, with the carts still running between them.
Who makes it
Hearthroad is made by one person, Raed, directing a team of AI agents that write the code, with an image model painting the art. Every road, cart and number in these posts is the real game, played and filmed.
What's next
Devlog #2 is 27 October, the day the game got its painted look and its own sound. A new devlog comes out every day until we have caught up, and then the devlog follows the work as it happens. The game isn't open to play yet: leave your email on the home page and we'll write when it is.
Patch notes · 26 October 2026
1 change- The first build on one map: buildings linked by roads, real carts carrying every load, a steadier picture.
Behind the scenes: Balance tools and the plan for the arc from hamlet to empire.