Desktop Folk: how to play, tips and FAQ
Free simulation game · No download · Phone, tablet and computer
Written by Xavier Eric Francois Guiter, who designed and built this game. Updated .
Six tiny people wake up on the desktop of an old computer and decide to stay. Desktop Folk is a slow, procedural village simulation: your folk eat, sleep, work, chat, fall in love, have children, grow old and die, and you are the Pointer, a presence they can see and react to.
There is no level to finish. A day lasts about a minute and a half at normal speed, a season seven days and a year 28. The village has to get through winters when nothing grows, random system errors that damage buildings, and the odd virus. Every world also speaks its own invented language: words you hear in the speech bubbles slowly become readable, and the sounds drift a little each year.
- Planning
- Resource management
- Patience
At a glance
- Game ends
- When the last folk dies
- Clock
- 1 game hour = 4 s at 1x
- Year
- 4 seasons of 7 days
- Buildings
- 8 types you can build
- Research
- 9 projects, 545 bytes in all
- Freex Coins
- 25 per milestone, 5 per season
How to play Desktop Folk
- Open the BUILD menu, pick a building, then click the desktop to place a blueprint. Builders carry pixels to it and put it up.
- Start with fields (food) and a store (food and pixels), then homes: each one sleeps 4 folk, 6 after the Mega RAM research.
- Build a school: scholars make bytes, which pay for research in the FOLK menu, such as faster crops, faster builders or new buildings.
- Use the Jobs window to keep enough farmers and gatherers, or leave it on automatic.
- Space pauses, keys 1 to 4 change the speed. The village saves on its own, and the game only ends if every folk is gone.
Controls
| Action | Computer | Phone or tablet |
|---|---|---|
| Inspect a folk | Click it | Tap it |
| Carry a folk | Drag it | Drag it |
| Build | B opens the Build menu, then click the desktop | Build menu, then tap the desktop |
| Pause and speed | Space, then 1 to 4 for 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x | Options menu |
| Open a window | C census, J jobs, R research, L lexicon, K chronicle, H help | Folk and Desk menus |
| Follow the selected folk | F | Not available |
| Move and zoom | Drag or arrow keys, + and - to zoom | Drag, zoom from the Options menu |
| Save now, close a window | Ctrl+S, Escape | File menu, window close box |
Building and research costs
In pixels and game hours: Home 20 (6 hours), Store 25 (6 hours), Field 5 (2 hours), School 40, Arcade 45 and Clinic 40 (10 hours each), ROM Shrine 50 (12 hours), MEGA Monument 300 (48 hours, only one). Demolishing a finished building returns half its cost.
Research is paid in bytes: Fill Patterns 15, Blitter Chip 30, ASCII Script 30, MIDI Ports 45, Debugger 45, Double Sided 60, then Mega RAM 80, OS in ROM 90 and Hard Disk 150, each locked behind an earlier one. You start with 70 food, 45 pixels and 0 bytes, so a School comes first.
How the village grows and shrinks
A folk is a child until day 10 of its life and an elder from day 60. Elders only study or rest. From day 70 the daily chance of dying of old age starts at 3% and climbs, and nobody lives past 100. A couple can have a baby when the mother is 14 to 56 days old, a bed is free, the stores hold 2 food per folk and their mood averages 40 or more: 30% a day, born 3 days later.
Wanderers join when a bed is free and the average mood is above 50, or the village has fewer than 6 folk. An adult with no partner whose mood stays under 20 for 3 days walks away. Words are learned by ear: 4 hearings, 2 after ASCII Script, and only speech on screen counts. The selected folk counts double.
Seasons and events
Crops grow at 1.2 in spring, 1 in summer, 0.75 in autumn and 0 in winter, when folk also get hungry 10% faster and lose health outside at night. On days 1 and 5 of autumn the game warns you if stored food is under 3.1 meals per folk per day of winter. Day 4 of autumn is the Harvest Festival.
From day 3, an event can hit at 8:00. Bombs (5%) damage one home, school, arcade, clinic or shrine. A virus makes 1 or 2 adults sick. Pixel rain grows up to 12 new groves. A disk error wipes 25% of the food, unless you have Double Sided. Summer can bring a 3-day drought (crops at 0.4), spring a 3-day bumper season (crops at 1.6).
Tips to score higher
- Food is the first thing to run out. Two or three fields early make everything after that easier.
- Winter needs roughly three meals per folk per day of the season: fill the stores during autumn.
- Click a folk to select it: you learn the words it says twice as fast.
- A system error can damage a building, and builders repair it for 10 pixels. Keep a small pixel reserve.
Common mistakes
- Building homes faster than food. Babies also need 2 stored food per folk.
- Ignoring the store limit. Food and pixels beyond what your stores hold are lost, so add a Store before a big harvest.
- Watching the village from far away. Words only count when the speaker is on screen, so follow a chatty folk with F.
- Counting elders as workers. From day 60 they stop farming, gathering and building.
Desktop Folk FAQ
How is the score calculated?+
It grows with your largest population, the folk alive now, the days survived, each research, each word understood, every generation after the first and every milestone reached. Milestones also give Freex Coins.
Can my village die out?+
Yes. If the last folk dies, the desktop is empty and the run ends. You can start a new world with a new language and a new map, or keep watching the empty desktop.
Is my village saved?+
Yes, automatically, on this device. Closing the page and coming back later picks up where you left off.
