Citrus & Stone

What Is Citrus & Stone?

Citrus & Stone is a cozy pixel-art base builder from solo developer Oort, upcoming on Steam. You play as a grapefruit named Tony or a cherry named Sherry, washed up on an island overrun by mushrooms. By day you gather, craft, and build a camp around your campfire. At six every evening, mushrooms pour out of the Rotten Bushes and try to put that campfire out. If the fire dies, the run is over.

It plays solo, in online co-op with a friend joining as Sherry over Steam, or in split-screen couch co-op where player two can pick up a controller and drop in at any time. The soundtrack is built around acoustic guitar played by Oort, which tells you the tone before you even launch it: cabin-in-the-woods warmth wrapped around a tower-defense spine.

Citrus & Stone Details

How to Play Citrus & Stone

The Day-Night Contract

Everything in the game hangs on one rule: the campfire must stay lit. Days are for preparation, nights are the exam. Each morning you gather wood, break rocks, fish, and cook. Each evening, mushroom raids come in bigger groups than the night before. That escalating curve means a camp that barely survived day three is already obsolete on day five, so the game quietly pushes you to keep expanding rather than turtling in place.

The island itself is fully dynamic, per the official description — you arrive with a wrecked boat and a broken campfire, and the terrain, spawns, and raid routes reshape how each run plays out. Two runs on the same island will not demand the same wall line.

Daytime Work

The island gives you a wrecked boat and a broken campfire to start. From there, the daytime loop covers the survival basics with a few twists:

• Gather and craft. Chop trees, break rocks, smelt iron, and work your way up from a makeshift axe to walls, gates, and archer towers. The iron smelting step is the gate to serious defenses — wood walls are a stall, metal-era structures are an answer.
• Upgrade the campfire. The fire has four levels, and each upgrade unlocks new recipes. It is both your base heart and your tech tree.
• Farm and cook. Grow wheat and fruit from bananas to dragon fruit, then cook recipes ranging from Guava Chiffon Cake to Sea Serpent Sashimi Boat. Cooking is not just flavor: dishes are one of the five shrine offering categories, so the kitchen feeds your escape plan directly.
• Fish. From the beach or from your rowboat once you build one and push out to sea. The rowboat also opens sea exploration beyond the home beach.

Hiring Survivors

The island is not empty. Survivors are camped around it, and you can pay them to join your camp. Each one takes a job: builders put up and repair walls, archers man the towers, trappers lay traps. They level up as they work, and you can upgrade their gear. The trick is matching jobs to the raid pattern your nights are showing you. If mushrooms keep chewing through one wall section, that is where your next builder and a tower belong.

There is one more management tool, and it is the most charming system in the game: grow wheat, brew it into beer in a keg, and serve it at the Bar Tab. The little green survivors love it, and it may motivate them to work harder. A round of beer as a productivity bonus is exactly the kind of cozy-game joke that sticks.

Beyond survivors, the island life list includes pets and traders — traders give the daytime economy a sink and a source for things your island is short on, and pets are the cozy-layer reward for a camp that is humming.

The Five Shrines

The long-term goal beyond surviving is escape. Five shrines are hidden in the forest, and each asks for its own category of offering: crops, materials, dishes, mushroom loot, and fish. That list doubles as a checklist of every major system in the game, so treat the shrines as your progression guide. Complete all five offerings and your boat is ready to sail.

Because mushroom loot is one of the five offering types, night raids are not pure punishment. Everything the mushrooms drop feeds your escape plan.

Night Defense

At 6:00 PM the mushrooms come. Early raids are small pushes aimed at the fire. As days pass, the groups grow, and some nights bring something bigger: boss encounters that need real preparation, not just a wall and hope. The official description promises many boss fights across the campaign — bosses are the pacing mechanism that keeps the escalation curve from being purely numeric.

Defense layers together: walls and gates slow the raid, traps thin it out, archer towers chip away, and your survivors handle repairs and shooting. Your own character joins in too, but the design clearly wants your base to do most of the fighting by mid-game, while you manage the economy that keeps it supplied.

Co-op, Both Kinds

Citrus & Stone handles two players unusually well for a cozy builder. Split-screen couch co-op runs two separate inventories on one screen — Tony Grapefruit for one player, Sherry for the other — and player two can join at any time with a controller, no restart required. Online co-op casts your friend as Sherry over Steam, and Remote Play Together extends the couch option over the internet. The natural division of labor: one player holds the base through the night while the other fishes, farms, and feeds the shrine offerings. One of you fishes while the other rebuilds the wall, as the official site puts it.

Advanced Tips

Fix the fire on day one. The broken campfire is your spawn point and your lifeline. Everything else, even the boat, can wait a day.

Walls pay rent every night. A single wasted day of gathering is annoying; a failed night is a run. Defensive structures convert daytime surplus into run insurance.

Climb to iron before the curve steepens. Smelted iron unlocks the serious defensive tier. The raid curve grows nightly, so the earlier you cross from wood-era to metal-era defenses, the more runway you buy.

Brew before the boss nights. If a bigger raid is coming, a keg of beer for the crew is cheap insurance on survivor output.

Fish toward the shrine. Fish offerings are one of the five escape requirements, so every fishing trip is progress, not downtime.

Cook for two goals at once. Recipes feed both survival and the dishes shrine offering. Cook the demanding recipes while you still have spare ingredients, not as a panic step at the end.

Watch the 6:00 PM clock. The raid timing is fixed and announced. End outdoor projects early enough to be inside your walls when the mushrooms surface.

FAQ

When does Citrus & Stone release? No date yet. The Steam page is live for wishlists and the official site has not announced a date.

How much will it cost? Not announced.

Can I play it with a friend? Yes, three ways: online co-op over Steam, split-screen couch co-op with separate inventories, or Remote Play Together.

Who are the characters? Tony Grapefruit, the citrus, and Sherry, the cherry — which is a stone fruit. That is the whole title.

Do the mushrooms ever stop? No. Raids arrive at six every evening and grow bigger each night, with boss encounters mixed in on some nights.

What happens if the campfire goes out? The run is over. The campfire is the single fail condition, which is why every defensive decision orbits it.

Is there an ending? Yes. Complete the offerings at all five shrines and the boat sails, ending your stay on the island.

What do the five shrines ask for? Crops, materials, dishes, mushroom loot, and fish — one category each, covering every major system in the game.

Does the campfire do anything besides survival? It is the tech tree. Four upgrade levels, each unlocking new recipes, so campfire progression gates what you can cook and craft.

Can survivors be improved? Yes. Hired survivors level up as they work, and you can upgrade their gear. Beer at the Bar Tab may push their output further.

Does it have controller support? Full controller support, including DualShock and DualSense, alongside keyboard and mouse.

Is there anything to do beyond defense? Plenty: fishing from beach and rowboat, farming bananas through dragon fruit, cooking, brewing, pets, traders, and sea exploration once your rowboat is built.

---

Last reviewed by Game How To Editorial. We play each game, verify controls against official sources, and update guides when game mechanics change.