Welcome to the first devlog for Sich: Cossacks Tale. We are Fablehearth Games, an independent studio, and Sich is our current project: a colony survival city-builder set among the Zaporizhzhian Cossacks of 18th-century Ukraine, coming to PC on Steam.
In these posts we will show what we are making, what already works and what still needs work. This first one covers the basics: what you can do in the current build, and what we need to finish before the free demo at Steam Next Fest, June 14–21, 2027.
From a wagon to a village
You start with a wagon, four settlers and a small stockpile at the edge of the wild steppe. Every map is generated fresh, in four sizes, with birch, alder, oak and willow woods, open grassland, berries, mushrooms and rocks. The Dnipro runs along one edge and lakes lie further in. Trees you cut down grow back where they stood, unless you build right next to them.
You can raise khatas, a well, a stockhouse, a station for splitting firewood, and huts for woodcutters, gatherers and hunters. Builders walk over with their hammers and you watch each house go up. Stores hold only so much, and food with nowhere to go spoils. A low late-afternoon sun lights the village, chimney smoke drifts over the roofs, and the grass and trees move in the wind.
Villagers with lives of their own
Each villager gets hungry, thirsty, tired and, in winter, cold. They take jobs, stop to eat and drink, rest at home and grow a year older every spring. Content couples have children, children grow up into working adults, and an unhappy village stops growing. Pull down homes and leave people without a bed, and some of them will pack up and leave.
Hunting with a musket
Herds of deer and families of wild boar live in the woods. Hunters take a musket, close in and fire. A wounded deer bolts, and a boar may turn and fight back. The hunter then carries the kill home, a deer across the shoulders or a boar held high overhead, and butchers it into meat at the hut. Young animals are never hunted, and they grow up to take the place of the adults you lose. In the hunter's hut you choose how many adults to leave alive, so the herds have a chance to recover.
On the road to Next Fest
The demo will cover your first year on the steppe: get through the first winter and hold off the first raid. Here is what we still have to build. These are plans and may change. Fishing huts on the rivers and lakes. Winter stockpiling, so food and firewood must be put by before the cold comes. Settlement ranks, from a khutir, a lone homestead, to a village and then a Sich, each one unlocking new buildings. Tatar raids that come with a warning and grow with your rank, answered by a palisade, a watchtower and a militia armed with muskets. The first decisions of the Rada, the Cossack council.
The demo also needs saving and loading, a settings menu and a short tutorial for your first hour. Alongside all that, new villager models in traditional Cossack dress are on their way into the game, and we are improving how the water looks.
The Steam store page is coming soon, so you will be able to wishlist Sich there. After the demo, Early Access is planned for autumn 2027, with English, Ukrainian, Spanish, French and Portuguese at launch.
Follow along
We post short clips from the current build regularly. Follow us on TikTok at @fablehearth.games and on Instagram at @fablehearthgames to see what changes from week to week. And come back to this devlog: in the next posts we will look at one part of the game at a time and show the demo features as they come together.