Quest forDuskara
Build, train, and sail before dusk claims the isles.
A calm, clay-crafted strategy game for macOS. Rule one island. Fourteen more wait beyond the water — including Duskara, the dark stronghold itself.
Quest for Duskara is a strategy game set across an archipelago of fifteen island cities. You rule one of them. Grow your settlement, raise an army, and conquer your way across the isles. The campaign is won the day Duskara's crown falls to you — and lost the day your last town falls.
One island, one board, one clock. Every decision you make in Quest for Duskara comes back to four verbs.
Tap Build and place structures on your town's 3×3 board. Houses add people, Piers bring in gold from sea trade, Farms grow food, Factories produce skill, and Barracks unlock soldier training. Every building can be upgraded to Level 3 — costs and output scale together, so a fully-grown Farm feeds an army.
Every day your buildings produce and your soldiers eat. Gold and skill pay for construction and training. Food feeds your army — run out and it starts to disband, knights first. People staff your buildings, so keep housing ahead of demand. Piers also draw trade ships from neighbouring free cities, each carrying a one-day offer to swap gold, food, or skill.
Build a Barracks, then train Archers and Knights from its panel. Archers are cheap and quick to field; a Knight outpowers two of them but eats twice as much and takes two people off the board for good. Your army can never commit more people than your Houses can hold — housing is the ceiling on your power.
From the World Map you can sail against any city in the archipelago — but an attack commits your active town's whole army, and it only succeeds if that army overpowers the defender's garrison and defenses. Captured cities join your empire: visit them to build and train there, and use Send to move gold, food, skill, or soldiers between your cities to reinforce the front.
Five buildings. Two units. One rule of engagement. Every number below is the number the game uses.
Choose a building, then place it on a highlighted town plot. Every town is founded with a House at its centre and a Pier on the shore.
Upgrading multiplies a building's base cost by its new level and its output to match: a Level 3 Farm yields 24 gold and 42 food a day, and a Level 3 House holds 24 people. Tap any building on the board to open its sheet and upgrade it.
The backbone of an early garrison. Ten archers cost 200 gold and eat 20 food a day.
More power per person and per coin — but knights starve first when the granary runs dry.
Its garrison fights at +35%, its walls add +55, and every sea lane between you and it adds more.
Every campaign draws a new archipelago. Islands gather in clusters and scatter loose; sea lanes link each isle to its nearest neighbours so the whole chain stays navigable. Hearthglen always founds in the south-west. Duskara always waits in the north-east.
Hover, tap, or focus a city to inspect it; on a small screen, drag the map to pan. Garrisons shown are what a fresh campaign deals on this layout — Duskara always starts at 188.
Each island links to its two nearest neighbours; loose groups are stitched together through their closest pair. Attacks and trade both follow the lanes.
Every patch of land belongs to its nearest city and takes that city's colour when it changes hands. Open sea is nobody's.
Five named places seed each world — a ruin on the plains, a shrine in the woods, a mountain gate, a harbor, and a desert obelisk.
Neighbours of Duskara start with 35–60 strength; the far isles with 3–8. The closer you sail to dusk, the harder every wall becomes.
What the old sailors say, told the way they tell it.
Long before the first pier was hammered into Hearthglen's shore, the isles answered to a single crown. It was worked from the same pale clay as the islands themselves, and it was said that whoever wore it could hear every tide in the archipelago at once.
The last king to wear it died at the standing stones on the plains — no heir, no will, no word. The stones have been called Crownless ever since. In the quiet that followed, the crown was carried east across the water by the king's own guard, to the one island the sun leaves first each evening. There they raised walls, trained knights, and closed the gates. The island's old name was forgotten. People simply called it Duskara: the place where dusk begins.
Four cities took Duskara's coin and raised their own banners — Wolfscar, Blackfen, Grimhaven and Redspire. They expand, drill their garrisons, and strike whichever neighbour is weakest whenever their granaries are full. The rest of the free cities trade, wait, and watch the horizon.
You hold Hearthglen: a house, a pier, and four people who believe the isles could be one again. Dusk moves west a little every year. The only question is whether you can sail east faster.
The ring where the last king fell. Nothing has grown inside it since.
Farmers leave the first sheaf of every harvest here. The forest gives back — mostly.
A pass burned open in the old wars. The coal seams still smoke on cold mornings.
Every trade ship in the isles has tied up here at least once. Prices are whispered, never posted.
A black needle in the sand. At dusk its shadow points at Duskara. Always.
What you actually do between founding Hearthglen and taking the crown.
Pick a difficulty. A House and a Pier already stand; four people are waiting for work. Build a Farm first — food is the leash on everything that follows.
Skill has no other source. Add a second House, and start weighing the trade offers that ships bring to your pier each day.
Train Archers while the granary fills. Upgrade the Farm before the first Knights — four food a day each adds up.
Every rival city builds, trains, and — if its stores are full — attacks a neighbour. Are you the softest target on the sea lanes?
Sail against a free city whose defense you clear. Survivors garrison it; visit, build, and Send supplies from home.
Each step closer to Duskara adds defense. Mass Knights in your forward city, stockpile food, and strike the moment the numbers say yes.
“Duskara fell on Day 63.” The crown is yours — until the next campaign draws a new sea.
Duskara is calm on the surface. Underneath, every coin has three places it could go.
Knights eat 4 food a day, archers 2. Miss a day and the hungriest units disband first. A Level 3 Farm makes 42 food a day — enough for ten knights.
Every workplace claims people who must already live in a House, and training a soldier removes them for good. Build housing ahead of the army you want.
The Factory costs no skill to build, so you can never lock yourself out. But a town without one can't upgrade, can't train, can't raise a Barracks.
Every 20 days rival cities build, train, and strike a neighbour weaker than themselves — Duskara first, if they can reach it. Your border towns are on that list.
An attack commits the active town's entire army. Win and the survivors stay as the new garrison; lose and they're gone. Send soldiers forward before you strike.
Each day a neighbouring free city offers a swap at your pier — 15–45 gold, 10–32 food, or 8–26 skill for one of the others. Offers expire at midnight.
Difficulty only changes what you begin with. Everyone starts with 100 gold and 50 skill; the campaign tops that up — and then it's the same sea, the same rivals, and the same 188 strength waiting at Duskara. Your campaign autosaves after every action and resumes from the menu.
Quest for Duskara is free and open source under the MIT license. It's a native macOS app built with SwiftUI, RealityKit and a Metal ocean — clone it and build it in Xcode.
Quest For Duskara.xcodeproj in Xcode.Quest For Duskara scheme and build for macOS. Your first campaign opens with a short tutorial.