Kestrel Road

How to get five people over the mountain.

How to begin

Pick what kind of year it is, who you are, and the month you leave, then press Outfit the wagon. At the counter, buy oxen first, then staples, then spares, clothing, powder and medicine. Six oxen pull better than four and eat the same grass. A five-person wagon eats about eleven pounds of staples a day at full rations, and the road is a hundred and forty days at best. Press Leave Halloway Landing when the wagon is loaded.

Controls

Everything is also reachable with a mouse or by touch, and the layout reflows to one column on a phone.

Turn order

A day resolves in a fixed order: weather, food, health and sickness, the team’s condition, then the miles you make, then whatever the road throws at you. Anything that costs you days — a breakdown, a mire, a wrong fork — runs those days through the same sequence, so people keep eating and sickness keeps working while the wagon stands still.

Movement

Distance made in a day starts from your pace and is then reduced by the country, the weather, the condition and number of your oxen, the weight in the wagon and the health of the company. Pace and rations are the two dials you hold; both trade miles against the people making them. Grass greens up in late spring and burns off in autumn, and a team on thin grass loses condition every day whether you rest it or not.

Crossings, hunting and sickness

At a river you may ford, caulk the wagon and float it, pay the ferry, or lay over a day and watch the water; the ferry is only offered when you can cover the fare. Hunting spends a day and some powder for meat that spoils faster than staples in the heat. Sickness arrives on its own schedule; a dose of medicine may cut a case short but nothing prevents one.

Scoring and winning

You win by reaching the Vellacrest Valley. Your record counts the survivors and their condition, what is still in the wagon, the money left, and how few days it took, multiplied by your trade and by the year you chose.

Losing

A crossing can also end wintered below the notch, stranded with fewer than two oxen, wrecked at a crossing, or with nobody left alive to drive. Those endings still score, at a fraction.

Saving and restarting

The game saves itself after every day into your browser’s local storage, under a single key. Return to the title screen and choose Resume the crossing to pick it up. Outfit another wagon clears the save and starts fresh. If your browser refuses storage the game still runs; it simply will not remember.