A new name: Everhearth
The project I previously wrote about as SimSandbox now has its real name: Everhearth. “SimSandbox” was a working label from day one — fine for early ECS and simulation-loop experiments, but it never captured what the game is actually becoming: a warm, cozy settlement sim about building a community, not a dry technical exercise.
Hence “hearth” — the fire at the heart of a settlement, the thing life gathers around.
The first public alpha
Alongside the rename comes the first public alpha build, available to download on ximot86.itch.io/everhearth. It’s still early — no pause mode, no full builder UI yet — but you can already:
- found a settlement and watch colonists build homes, storage, and farms,
- watch farmers produce food and lumberjacks gather resources,
- follow agents reacting to hunger through a simple FSM,
- explore a procedurally generated world map with neighboring settlements and trade routes.
What changed under the hood
Beyond the rename, the simulation itself has grown since the last post — more building types, a cleaner HUD, and a more resilient save system (still versioned from day one, now a few file versions in). The architecture described in the previous technical post — two threads, a bitset ECS, a deterministic 30 Hz loop — stays exactly the same; it’s the foundation the rest of the game grows on.
Play it and let me know what you think
The alpha is free and available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. If you enjoy games in the style of Songs of Syx, or you’re curious what a simulation like this looks like under the hood, grab it and share your thoughts.
More about the project and its architecture is on the Everhearth project page.