The Piper of Dawn

The Piper of Dawn is a farming and alchemy business game developed by Bone Nail Studio. The player takes the role of an alchemist in Diamond City, where the business grows through cultivating its own workers. The game combines farming, crafting and selling with relationship building and a dark fantasy story that has multiple endings. It is the fourth game from the studio and the official sequel to Yog-Sothoth’s Yard.

The farming side of the game includes more than 100 crops, which can be experimented with by adjusting traits to improve harvests. Players can expand underground and use alchemical circles to build a self-sustaining farm. Crops, potions and rare curiosities can be stocked in a decorated shop, and building a reputation attracts non-human customers and unlocks special orders. Workers called Peoplesprouts are grown by the player and can be assigned to farming, retail and manufacturing. Each has talents suited to particular jobs, and overwork reduces their Sanity, so they need time to recover. Alchemy can turn materials into goods or grant Peoplesprouts abilities, and can be combined with Oracles and volatile elements. Divine blessings from Ancient and Outer Gods can be collected and combined to give bonuses during each time rewind, though the gods’ influence comes with whispers.

The story is shaped by the player’s choices and reputation. Six factions can be won over to unlock special orders and new story possibilities, and over 40 NPCs live in the city, including six central heroines with relationship paths. These are Sissi, a barmaid with superhuman strength who is the first full-time hire, Nene, a mathematician’s daughter with combat skills, Gretel, a marksman with rose-gold fur who records incidents in her Field Notes, Jimo Li, Aurora Ludwig, a princess and goddess with strong magical power, and one character whose file is classified. Additional activities include fishing across Diamond City, summoning blessings through Oracle Summons, and playing Blackjack against residents at the Golden Cage Card Parlor.