Fantasy Colony Sim meets Old-School RTS
On & Under is a fantasy colony simulation game with deep RPG and RTS elements. You arrive in a fresh wilderness with a handful of people and a cart of tools. Where you settle, who you become, and what you build is entirely yours to decide. It is a passion project built on a simple premise: What do the everyday lives of fantasy peasants, workers, and warriors actually look like—and what drives them to carve a spired castle into the side of a mountain?
Not only warriors are heroes
A paladin might purge a foul catacomb of the undead—but an exceptional miner can make your settlement just as rich by sensing out the deepest, most valuable veins of ore. Every individual has their own traits, skills, stats, desires, and relations with others. They form bonds, master professions, and look after their own needs—so long as you guide them through the journey.
Carve a Destructible Smooth Voxel World
The world is entirely destructible. Utilizing various tools, carve tunnels into mountainsides, mine precious ore, or hollow out an underground city. Beneath the surface lies an expansive subterranean realm—fertile ground for secluded dwellings, and home to things that have waited a long time in the dark.
Build Without Limits
A log cabin, a stone castle, a deep dungeon, or a wizard's spire. Place foundations and walls wherever you like, grid-free. Adjust the height and thickness of walls, curve your roofs at any angle, and raise everything from a fairytale elven stead to a brutalist dwarven hall.
Lead your people in RTS Battles
The wilderness covets your wealth. Beasts roam the woods, gnolls raid from hill camps, and giant spiders descend from the dark. When danger comes knocking, ring the militia bell—your enrolled fighters drop their tools and take up arms. Take direct control of your finest warriors and lead them yourself in old-school RTS combat. Every last hit counts. Every fallen foe drops loot for your settlement to claim.
Elites, enchantments, and loot
Not every foe is an ordinary beast. Some are elites— marked by an enchantment that burns, freezes, poisons, or worse. A fiery gnoll manhunter sets your warriors ablaze. A frozen spider slows them to a crawl. A venomous goblin leaves wounds that linger long after the fight. Defeat them, and they drop the gear they equipped. A fiery blade. A frozen spear. A venom-tipped bow. Every elite is a challenge; every drop is a relic to wield or a fortune to claim.
Explore and expand
Scout your surroundings and the depths below to lift the fog of war. Survey the most fertile soil, the richest mineral veins, the liveliest forests for big game. Uncover ruins of the old world, clear out enemy camps, and delve into long-forgotten lairs in the dark.
A quest for adaptation
Every villager has racial, cultural, religious, and personal preferences. Every biome, altitude, and depth affects them differently. What you build must adapt to its denizens' characteristics—unless you aspire to become a dungeon keeper. Good luck keeping an elf six feet under in a moist dark cave for years on end. It's up to you to make them smile or frown.
On & Under has been in development since May 2025 as a love letter to the classic colony sims and old-school RTS games of an earlier era—titles like Warcraft III and Dwarf Fortress. This game doesn't aim to match the simulation depth of Dwarf Fortress or the competitive edge of Warcraft III. Instead, it focuses on the individuality of villagers, the texture of their society, and combat that recalls the RTS-RPG hybrid Blizzard perfected in the early 2000s—paired with a softer, painterly aesthetic.
Current scope
The current development goal is a polished 1 km² procedural 3D world layered over a 2D world map that offers various biomes to embark your people. Within this space: seasonal events, weather, migrations, traders, ruins, dungeons, and bandits—a small but dense, living region with limited planet-scale interactions.
Planned Features
Multiple playable races - Humans, dwarves, elves, and more, each with regional variants and an origin culture.
Custom starting group - A point-based system to allocate skills, starting supplies, gear, and group size to author your own opening story.
Dynamic weather system - Temperature, crops, and character moods all shaped by the seasons and the skies.
Skill trees and ascension professions - Every character levels in their craft. A skilled woodworker can ascend into a carpenter, a fletcher, or— a mere watchman can become a graceful blademaster after years of training and countless battles.
Archetype trees - Whether you found a secluded necromantic cult or a hardworking mining colony, your settlement's cumulative knowledge advances along distinct paths: matter, death, arcane...
Outposts, wanderers, traders, dungeons - You are not alone. Wandering knights, trade outposts, faction camps, and forgotten dungeons await across the map and they don't dwell forever for your attention. The map is dynamically populated back and forth through the years.
Religion and entertainment - Every villager has something to do in their leisure time-praying, drinking or attending rituals. Provide the spaces they need to live, not just to work.
Dynamic water - From rivers to seaside, from waterfalls to cavern lakes, water shapes the settlement. Dig channels, raise aqueducts, harness the flow.
Long-term vision
If the project finds its audience and development can continue across the years ahead, the long-term vision is a living world of kingdoms, tribes, gods, dynasties, and ancient evils, all connected through evolving relationships and conflicts that continue far beyond the borders of a single settlement.
