I just want to share a bit of love for this game. I only had time to learn how to play and build two towns over the weekend. The first one was doing fine, sort of managing to squeak by, until the hunting lodge burned down. The town slowly started to starve to death. I decided starting over would be easier.

My second town was doing *enormously* well, with lots of food and resources to spare and a population climbing towards thirty. Then a tornado ripped through the town, demolishing every single house (and the fishery and the woodcutter's shed), leaving only a grown woman and two kids. Thankfully, this happened in early spring, and that woman *rebuilt the town* while living off the piles of food and resources everyone else had stockpiled.

I nursed that population from three people to seven, and happiness is starting to recover, but I think I'm going to start over. Watching a well-fed town covered in snow relaxes me somewhere deep inside.

There are mods that add "Adam & Eve" starting conditions, which means you begin with only one 16-year-old boy and one 16-year-old girl. You might enjoy that.

Oh, I didn't enjoy pulling the population from three to seven over the course of several years. I did it mostly to see if I could. I'm still sussing out a lot of the game mechanics.