Barley & Bronze

Build a city as the Bronze Age ends.

A classic walker-driven city builder set around 1200 BCE. Ugarit, Mycenae, the Hittites and the Nile.

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Four civilizations

Four cities at the end of an age

Each with its own buildings, people, gods, rules and a nine-mission campaign that follows its own history.

An Egyptian city with the Monuments menu open
From tents to great houses

Every house tells you what it needs next

Lay out streets and families walk in and pitch tents. Then each house asks for more: a road, water, food carried by a market lady, a priest on his rounds. At the eighth level a great house wants wine and glass.

Walkers carry it all door to door. If a street goes without, you can see exactly why.

The Old King's Pyramid beside the Mortuary Temple and the Palace
Great works

Monuments that rise course by course

Gangs level the site, haulers drag stone, brick and timber up the ramp, and each course is paid for in silver. The Old King's Pyramid takes years. So do the Great Sphinx, the Yerkapı rampart and the Hanging Gardens.

Baal in the clouds striking a raiders' ship with lightning
Seven gods

Gods who step into the world

Keep the altars stocked and hold the festivals, and a pleased god may come down. The storm god rides the clouds and his lightning drives raiders' ships back out to sea. A sea serpent rises off the coast.

An angry god warns you a season before it strikes, and there is always something you can build or do about it.

Ugarit at night, the quays and streets lamplit
The collapse

The world comes apart, one year at a time

Famine in Hatti. Failing floods. An earthquake. The Sea Peoples on the coast, and then the tin ships stop coming. Kings write to ask for goods by a deadline, and raiders land with a day's warning.

Build walls, towers and gates, keep the water carriers close to the fires, and see how long your lamps stay lit.

4Civilizations
36Campaign missions
7Gods per city
8House levels
69Clay tablets
Achievements, fired in clay

Sixty-nine tablets to earn

Each one is pressed with real signs of its period, sealed, chipped and fired. Hover one to read it.

UgaritAlphabetic cuneiform and a rolled cylinder seal
HattiHittite cuneiform under a royal stamp seal
MycenaeLinear B, blackened by the fire that kept it
EgyptHieratic in black and red ink on limestone
Coming to Steam

Found your city

The Steam page opens soon. Wishlist it then, and you will hear the day the first ships come in.

Steam page coming soon