Deeds & Dust is a free browser strategy game in the tradition of the empire-builders you used to play before they became pay-to-win, set in an 1870s land rush. Every player gets the same 24 actions a day. Nobody can buy a head start, nobody needs a sitter, and every Territory ends the day the railroad reaches the western edge, with your family's name in the Chronicle.
Deed filed.
We'll write when the alpha opens. Until then, the Discord is where the first towns are forming.
The three rules
01 · No pay-to-win
The shop sells reports, notifications and cosmetics. Resources, hands, herds, land, build speed and offices cannot be bought by anyone, at any price, ever. The code that runs the world cannot read who has paid.
02 · No night shift
Your Daylight refills one action an hour and banks up to 48, so a missed day is forgiven. Queue builds before you have the resources and they start on their own. Schedule a raid to land at breakfast. A script can't do more than you can.
03 · No dead servers
A Territory opens on a published date. The railroad advances one column a day from the east, and the day it reaches the western edge the Statehood Convention scores every town and the world closes. A wider map is a longer game; the first worlds run about six weeks. Your family name, titles and brands carry on in the Chronicle.
The railroad
Before land opens, the Surveyor's Report publishes three routes the railroad might take across the Territory. Only one holds the charter, and nobody is told which. For a week the line is built out of sight beyond the eastern edge. On day 8 it emerges, and it advances one column every day. The day it reaches the western edge is the last day of the season, so the width of the map is the length of the game. The alpha and beta worlds are 35 columns wide, which makes them six-week games; later Territories can be wider and longer.
What you'll be looking at
Mock-ups of the panels you'll spend your time in. Text and 2D, built to work on a phone at a bus stop or a second monitor at work.
How a Territory unfolds
The calendar below is the six-week version the alpha and beta run on: 35 columns, 42 days. A wider Territory stretches the middle weeks and keeps the same opening and ending.
Surveyor's Report. Three routes published. Pre-registration opens. Pick a faction, join a town or found one.
Land opens on the eastern edge. Every new claim gets 72 hours of Surveyor's Peace; first-timers get a week. The railroad is building out of sight, already pulled by whatever towns build near the edge.
Day 8: the line emerges. Somewhere on the east edge, not necessarily where any survey said. From here it advances a column a day, with stakes three columns ahead.
Outlaws and stations. Outlaw camps appear in dusted land for scouts to track. Towns court the line with hotels, saloons and their own track.
Claim-jumping opens. The Land Office stops new deeds in the east. Hold a rival's parcel for 48 hours and the deed is yours.
Delegates named, one per ten town members. Towns start trading votes.
Day 42: the railhead reaches the west, and the Statehood Convention sits. Deeds held 40%, treasury 20%, population 20%, stations and connected track 20%. The winning town names the capital. The Chronicle is written. The next Territory opens on the calendar.
Three factions at launch
Your faction is how you like to play, not whose flag you fly. Towns are alliances of players, and a strong town wants all three: Cattlemen to bring in the money, Miners to hold the walls, Boosters to bring the railroad. Every faction can do everything; each has one Hand nobody else can train and one building nobody else can raise. A fourth arrives in a later Territory.
For raiders and the restless. Herds grow fat on open range and drift at night unless you fence them; drive them to a railhead and they turn into dollars. Fast, cheap Riders for the rustling.
Unique: Rider · Range Camp
For the ones who hold ground. Better stone and iron, stockades that cost less and stand longer, and the Riflemen a town hides behind in week four and still holds its deeds at the Convention.
Unique: Rifleman · Stockade
For town builders. A longer build queue, hotels and an opera house that pull the railroad toward your streets, and a Marshal who defends any claim in the town. The faction that makes a place rich.
Unique: Marshal · Hotel & Opera House
Questions
Open the Telegraph, read what happened overnight. Spend some Daylight: queue a building, send a wagon to the Post, dispatch riders or set an escort. Say something in town chat. Close the tab. Two sessions of five minutes uses a full day's actions.
Yes. Free players will see one small advertisement in the corner of the screen; that is what keeps the free tier free, and the game says so plainly. The optional Almanac subscription, a few dollars a month, removes the ad and adds notification routing, richer reports, map notes and export tools. Neither the ad nor the Almanac changes a single number in the simulation. Alpha and beta players get the Almanac free for their first Territories.
Because dead servers are how these games die, and because a world that ends gives everyone a fresh start against veterans. What you keep is the part people actually mourn: your family name, your titles, your brands, and the Chronicle of what you did.
Yes. Outlaw camps, herds, trade and solo claims give a lone family a whole season of play, and Surveyor's Peace keeps new players out of reach. But towns are where the stories are, and you'll be placed in an open one on day one unless you say otherwise.
Both. It's a web app you can add to your home screen. Attack warnings arrive as push notifications if you want them, and never between the hours you set.
One developer, on one server. That's why the game is rules and text rather than 3D, and why the first Territory is small. The devlog goes to the mailing list every week.