The Village Above the Well

The Village Above the Well is set in an old mining village built around a well that predates the houses surrounding it. Beneath it lie abandoned galleries running through quarries, furnaces, crystal caves and ruins left by a forgotten people. The player’s grandfather has lost a small blue stone medallion down there, the last keepsake of the woman he loved, and the player sets out to recover it while rebuilding the village above.

The village side of the game involves gathering wood, stone, iron and crystal across three quality tiers and constructing buildings such as a sawmill, quarry, warehouse, forge and arcane workshop, each of which can be placed anywhere on the map. Players hire woodcutters, stoneworkers, miners and lapidaries and send them on expeditions lasting between 10 minutes and 12 hours, which continue to produce resources while the game is closed. Raw materials are refined into planks, blocks, ingots and catalysts, which are used to forge equipment, upgrade tools to reach better resources and improve the adventurer’s gear.

The well itself contains seven dungeons of ten floors each. Combat resolves automatically while the player manages the village, with progress depending on what has been built and equipped. There are 42 relics to find that strengthen the hero and reveal the history of what lay beneath the village. Progression systems include skill trees for mining and combat, three tiers of tools, ten upgrade levels for each piece of equipment, and a well that only opens fully once the six parts of the Founder’s Seal have been gathered. The game presents its story of memory and loss through the village the player rebuilds.