#ostriv

Ostriv is still in alpha, so it's rough around the edges and there are some pieces missing. The devs are based in Ukraine, so, you know, they've got some other stuff on their plate right now that might keep them from updating the game in a timely manner. Despite all that, the game in its current state is very playable--like, "I'm screwing up my sleep schedule and giving myself back problems from playing this game six hours straight" playable.

So let us build a town. I'm going to call this little hamlet Stele Scobitura, and if you know what I shoved through Google translate to generate that name, you have the right to make fun of me for it because it's pretty dumb and almost certainly gibberish.

I plop down my camp near the edge of the lake on a map I've never used before. It is March, 1721, and the weather is brisk. The last patches of winter snow are just melting. We're not too far from the water, good for gathering reeds--we'll need those for the thatched roof cottages--and the trees, nice and tall for chopping. Our first order of business: find the mayor, and fire him.

I'm certain that Opanas Perederiy has plenty of good qualities, and that he would make a fine mayor in another life, but the fact of the matter is we've only got nine men in this camp and we need every last one of them if we want to finish building our houses before winter. Nobody wants to be stuck in a tent when the snows come.

Fortunately, while some jobs are restricted to men (construction, chopping trees), the job of the mayor requires only literacy, not upper-body strength. An educated woman can do the job just as well.

So, who all here knows how to read?

Of the 18 adults in our camp, only six have the education required to serve in government: the current mayor Opanas, his young wife Olha, their neighbors Yarovyd and (another) Olha, a man named Pavlo, and a man named Mykhailo. The two Olhas are the only women in the camp with any education--a sad state of affairs that they hope to remedy in the next generation. Between the two of them, the Olhas agree that Olha Lyashenko is the best choice to lead the fledgling settlement of Stele Scobitura. As soon as everyone has a roof over their heads, the younger Olha Perederiy will make an excellent counsellor to the new mayor.

With our matriarchy established, we are ready to start building.

Olha plans the first row of houses along the waterfront and gives each one a generous plot of land for gardening. Any home that's finished before the end of planting season will have a chance to grow some vegetables, which will be a welcome addition to everyones' diets come winter and help keep away the scurvy. The game doesn't have a scurvy mechanic, but I'm playing it like it does. It seems like the sort of thing the devs might eventually implement. My brother got scurvy once, it's not fun!

With all nine men working, the houses go up fast. One thing I really like about Ostriv, that photos don't quite capture, is that each building is constructed beam by beam, nail by nail. Watching the little men build the houses with their little tools and their little carts is hypnotic. I could do it for hours.

It is 2/3rds of the way through March and the first house is complete! Opanas and Olha Perederiy move in with their two young sons and immediately break out the shovels: they have a garden to plant.

Soon after, other children from the village start coming by to hang out in the Perederiys' new house. It's certainly more interesting than their tents. Sisters Natasya and Nadiya Shchutska (7 and 4) are frequent visitors, providing their mother Solomiya a welcome reprieve from childcare duties. Friendship between the Shchutsky and Perederiy families grows, and when the second house is complete, the Shchutskys move in next door. They plant a little fruit tree in addition to their vegetable garden! It won't produce a harvest for a few years, but it's an investment for the future.

The third house is completed, further down the shoreline. The Silpets family moves in--husband Pavlo, of literacy-having fame, and wife Svitlana, not a big reader--and plants their garden. They may be the last family with the opportunity to do so: it's already May, planting doesn't usually continue much past April.

The Levchenkos move in to the next house in mid-May and surprise! They also manage to plant a garden! Usually, the house construction goes slower. I tend to get two, maybe three families into their homes before the end of planting season when I don't fire the default male mayor. With nine strong men working under a competent woman's leadership, there's more food for everyone in the year's harvest. Behold, the power of misanthropy! /s

The gardens planted by the Perederiys and the Shchutskys are growing nicely. Looks like squash for sure, and maybe beets? Carrots? I can't always tell from looking at the crops what kind of vegetables they'll be once harvested. Nobody's put up any apiaries yet, which is a shame. It would be nice to have some honey with the buckwheat pancakes they'll all be eating for the next few years while we get the real farms up and running.

From the looks of our construction queue, mayor Olha and her husband will be the last family to move out of their tent and into a real house. Normally, the mayor gets the first house. This feels more fair. A leader should make sure her citizens' needs are met first before claiming luxuries for herself.

Our boys at the forestry have been hard at work stockpiling firewood for winter, and there's enough of it now that it feels safe to designate a few charcoal piles. The women of Stele Scobitura haven't had much to do up until now, not on the town-building front. They can pile up a few stacks of firewood and clay to turn into charcoal. It isn't useful right now, but by the time the burning is complete, there will with any luck be a smithy to make use of it.

The Strietsky family moves into the first house on the second row back from the waterfront. To my surprise, they ALSO plant a garden! It's almost the end of May now, I don't know how high their yield will be with such a short growing season. That's five houses with successful gardens in the first year, more than half the village! We will be ROLLING in vegetables, baby!

The Romanets move in next, the sixth family to settle in a house. It is too late in the summer now to start planting. Their baby is one of the village's youngest citizens. The game helpfully informs me that this little freeloader is an uneducated deadbeat who can't hold down a job.

The Bratkivs move in next, then the Zavaliys. The Zavaliys' yard has a nice row of raspberry bushes! They won't bear fruit this year, but we'll have berries eventually. It's nearing August, the height of summer. Villagers are wearing paths into the ground along what will eventually be the roads of a thriving town, while grass starts to fill in the patches of bare earth left behind at the mostly-dismantled campsite. Only the mayor's tent remains. Hardworking men and women pause from their labors to cool their heels on the waterfront, enjoying the breeze as much as the view. The late-planted pumpkins in the Striletskys' backyard are just barely beginning to turn from pale green to yellow and orange.

The men hoist the last bundles of thatch into place on the ninth house, and the mayor and her husband finally move out of their tent and into the home where they'll raise little Hremyslav and Taras. There is little time for relaxing, though.

A granary is next on the list, to be completed before we start harvesting all these vegetables. The town hall is next--perhaps not as immediately necessary as a smithy or a carpentry, but useful as a warm, dry place to gather once the weather makes it impractical to hold town meetings out under the open sky. Olha the elder immediately hires on Olha the younger as her assistant, and together they set the prices the town will pay and charge for the citizens' harvest--low, in both cases, and equal for buying and selling. The goal this winter is not to profit off the produce trade, only to consolidate the village harvest and redistribute it to those who had no time for planting.

The harvest brings in beets, horseradish, garlic, carrots, and a huge bumper crop of peas--over 450 units of peas from the Silpets' garden alone! The women manage the collection, storage, and sale of the village produce while the men finish building the smithy, carpentry, and thatchery, all essential now that the building supplies they brought to the village with them are running low. With the initial construction rush over, a few men leave the building team to work as blacksmiths and carpenters, and three women hurry to gather reeds from the lake's edge and dry them into thatch before the winter freeze comes. For once, we have full employment for all women and all men in the village: everyone working together to prepare for a long winter.

We did it! Everyone is warm and safe under a thick thatched roof before the snow begins to fall, and everyone has enough firewood and food to last until spring. Winter won't be restful--there are nails to smith, carts to repair, land surveying to be done, farms to plan--but right now, Stele Scobitura takes a break to enjoy a nice bowl of peas and congratulate one another on a job well done.