You have left your life and home country behind, travelling north across the sea in pursuit of your dreams and the hope of avoiding the shadow of an impending war.
And so, you find yourself in the harbour city of Lewthport, the proud owner of ‘The Silver Spoon’, a run-down restaurant in a run-down part of town.
Now it’s up to you to make your dream a reality. With a hefty loan to repay, you’ll need to improve the restaurant quickly… expand the menu, upgrade the decor, build connections with suppliers and keep your customers happy.
Meanwhile, a storm is brewing outside. The choices you make will shape the future of both the restaurant and the community around it.
The Silver Spoon has seen better days. It will be up to you revive it, and give it a new identity.
Design the layout, choose the furniture and decor, purchase ingredients and curate the menu to create the kind of place you want to run, and the kind of community you wish to attract.
A greasy spoon for the working locals, fuelled by favours?
An exotic bistro, that wins favour with its atmosphere, and experimental menus?
A gourmet restaurant, that chases tradition and the funds of the upper crust?
The choice is yours!
At Midday the doors open and it’s time for service!
As Maitre’D you’re in the heart of the maelstrom, the difference between success or disaster.
Playing out as a turn-based tactical game, you’ll need to seat customers, take orders, and ensure the food comes out promptly, keeping your guests happy and managing the stress of the staff.
Getting it right means more money in the till and winning favor with your customers.
When you’re not serving the locals, you can explore Lewthport, meeting its inhabitants and discovering more about your new home.
Visit the market in the morning to stock up on ingredients and build relationships with your suppliers or jump on a tram to go to the harbour district to destress. After work, head for a drink and a yarn at the local pub.
The bonds you build and the choices you make will affect both the success of the restaurant and your own standing in the community.
You fled your native Grauberg and the shadow of an impending war, but nowhere is immune from the gathering storm.
The conflict between your old home and its neighbours threatens to spill out across the region, dragging your new home into the very war you had hoped to escape.
Despite the times, your loan repayments are still due. Every week.
Every choice you make will have ripple effects, from the very beginning of the game as you choose your character’s backstory.
The relationships you build with market vendors will determine what ingredients and recipes you have access to, and what kind of menu you can create. Your menu will alter which characters you will meet and which stories you will be part of.
The choices you make in those stories will impact your reputation, the relationships you build, and what happens to the people around you. It is not enough to simply keep your business afloat. You must embed yourself with the community to survive what’s to come.
Set in the same world as The Pale Beyond, The Hearth & Harbour takes place in an alternate world, inspired by Europe at the turn of the 20th century. It’s a time of great change and industry, of radical ideas about class, the beginning of the end for the old ways and institutions, and growing tensions both between and within countries.
You’ll meet an expansive cast of characters who bring this world to life as you try to find your place within it.
ABOUT THE DEVELOPER
Saltstone Studios is located in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Their first game was The Pale Beyond, a story-driven survival management game.
The team is interested in exploring novel systems-based narrative games that combine the kind of deep choice and consequence narratives you find in interactive fiction, with extensive systems more common from other genres - all designed to bring in-depth worlds and characters to life.
Each title draws direct influences from the complex history of Ireland and Britain, with extensive literary and historical research. Every pixel, sentence, and musical note, is hand crafted in house with care and attention.
