Gospel Snow Town

Overview

Gospel Snow Town is an AI-driven survival simulation from solo developer Liker, released June 18, 2026 on Steam for S$2.39. The year is 2147. An extreme cold storm has buried the Northern Hemisphere under a permanent −60°C freeze, and in the forgotten frontier town of Gospel Snowtown, eight residents must endure the endless winter on dwindling firewood, food, electricity, and medicine.

You are not a god and you are not a commander. You are an observer with a voice. You can call camp meetings, propose actions, and give orders, but every resident weighs your suggestion against their personality, their condition, and their assessment of risk before deciding whether to listen. That single design decision changes the genre: instead of optimizing workers, you spend the game earning trust, framing proposals that pass, and building the social capital that keeps eight stubborn individuals alive.

The loop structure gives failure meaning. When a run collapses, the next loop starts with the same eight residents and the same town, but survivors' memories carry over as fragments: stat resistances and behavioral biases that stack across cycles. The perfect ending, all eight alive when winter ends around day 90, typically lands somewhere between loops 9 and 15.

Who it is for: RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress players who want a tighter narrative-focused sandbox, roguelite fans who enjoy progression through failure, and anyone curious what LLM-driven villagers actually feel like to manage.

Who it is not for: players who want direct control. If a villager refusing to chop wood makes you want to throw the mouse, the observer role will fight you the whole way.

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Getting Started

Your first run will end in disaster, and that is fine. The game is designed so that every collapse funds the next attempt. What follows is how to make the disaster educational instead of random.

Your first 30 minutes

1. Start on Easy. Higher starting stockpile and lower consumption rates let you learn the meeting system before the margins tighten. It is not a lesser experience; the AI behaves identically.
2. Call a camp meeting immediately. Pause and gather everyone. Listen to who speaks first, who agrees with whom, who stays silent. That baseline reads each resident's starting Affinity and personality lean, and it costs nothing.
3. Open the resource panel and do the math. Eight residents burn roughly 8 firewood, 6 food, and 2 electricity per day on Easy. Count your stock, divide, and mark the day each resource hits zero. Firewood is almost always first.
4. Make one small proposal and watch the vote. Suggest a single lumberjack task. If it passes, you have learned the proposal rhythm. If it fails, the refusal itself is information: Affinity below roughly 40 produces reliable no votes.
5. Let the first night pass without meetings. Night is for rest and warmth. Meetings at night drain Stamina and Sanity for no benefit.
6. Check the furnace every single morning. The furnace is the town's single point of failure. If firewood trends below 15 units, nothing else matters until that is fixed. A dead furnace kills everyone within hours.

Beginner mistakes to avoid

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Core Mechanics

The eight residents and what they actually do

Two structural facts shape every run. First, the medic and the lumberjack are single points of failure: lose Su Yan and every injury trends fatal, lose Zhao Tiezhu and the furnace math stops working. Second, personalities shift. Residents who witness deaths or starvation become more risk-averse or paranoid in later loops, which changes how they vote.

The four vital resources

Priority reads firewood above everything. The other three all kill slowly enough to respond to; the furnace does not.

The loop system and memory inheritance

Each loop restarts the winter with randomized resource levels but persistent town layout. When the run ends, residents bank memory fragments tied to how they died. Xinyue freezing to death means next loop she starts with cold resistance and a behavioral bias toward sheltering during blizzards. Fragments stack: five to ten cycles of targeted deaths build +20 to +40 in a resident's primary weakness. Two rules matter. The memory only transfers when the entire loop ends, so one lucky survivor resets the bank. And the cause of death selects the resistance, which is why deliberate, varied failures beat random ones.

Camp meetings and voting

The meeting is your only steering wheel. Proposals pass on a simple majority of five of eight; ties fail. Each resident's vote weighs Affinity, Sanity, Health, personality, and current weather. Passing a proposal earns +2 to +5 Affinity with supporters, and failed proposals cost Affinity with everyone, which is why spamming unpopular ideas digs a hole you cannot climb out of. Residents assigned to outdoor work cannot attend meetings, and the game will not recall them, a quirk with genuine tactical uses covered below.

Status attributes and thresholds

Cold accelerates Sanity drain by 25%, so the furnace stabilizes minds as much as bodies. Pairing residents with high mutual Affinity on shared tasks slows Sanity drain further through social interaction.

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Resident Tier List

Ranked for a perfect-ending run:

If an early loop must claim someone, spend Lu Chen or Xinyue. Losing Su Yan or Zhao Tiezhu cascades into a dead run by mid-winter.

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Progression Strategy: The Three Phases

Phase 1: Learning (loops 1-4)

Do not try to win. Engineer losses instead. Let each loop end from a different cause, starvation, cold, injury, Sanity collapse, so each resident banks the resistance you will need later. Keep notes on voting patterns and who refuses which tasks. By loop 4 you should know each resident's personality well enough to predict their vote before the meeting starts.

Phase 2: Stabilization (loops 5-8)

With resistances accumulating, push for day 40-50 before casualties. Practice the blizzard rotation until it is boring. Start steering deaths: your weakest resident takes the exposure that banks their missing resistance. Attempt the Research Facility in the northwest for the permanent Sanity bonus and the lore that explains why the loops exist.

Phase 3: The victory run (loop 9 onward)

By now your core residents carry +20 to +40 in their primary weakness. The winning pattern is rhythm, not heroics: morning furnace check, daytime task assignments, evening meeting only when needed, night rest. Keep firewood above 25 at all times, order bed rest below 50% Health, save manually every 2-3 in-game days, and refuse every tempting long-distance scavenge. The run you lose at day 80 is the one where someone got greedy at day 79.

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Step-by-Step Strategy: Five Sequences That Win Runs

Sequence 1: The first 3-day setup (every loop)

Day 1 morning:
  ├── Camp meeting: propose "Zhao Tiezhu chops wood"
  ├── If passed: propose "Qingxuan sets traps near the east wall"
  ├── End meeting. Let them work.
  └── Evening: verify furnace. Firewood should read 50+.

Day 2 morning:
  ├── Furnace check. Expect roughly −8 firewood/day.
  ├── Propose "Wang Ce repairs the fishing rig"
  ├── Propose "Xinyue scouts the perimeter"
  └── Evening: note who completed tasks, note every refusal.

Day 3 morning:
  ├── Furnace check: firewood should sit around 34-40.
  ├── Propose "Lu Chen gathers near the town"
  ├── Su Yan: mental support on the lowest-Sanity resident
  └── Expect the first emergency soon: injury, blizzard, or argument.

Success looks like a stable baseline: 30+ firewood, trap food trickling in, the fishing rig under repair. Repeated refusals mark the refuser's Affinity below 40 and tell you where the affinity-building work goes.

Sequence 2: The blizzard prep rotation

Blizzards run 5-10 days and triple firewood burn. Most first-timers prep for three days and die on storm day six.

T−2 days (forecast shows the storm):
  ├── Meeting: "Zhao Tiezhu focuses on firewood, nothing else"
  └── Accept no substitute tasks.

T−1 day (storm on the horizon):
  ├── Qingxuan: craft 3+ first-aid kits
  ├── Wang Ce: preemptive furnace repair
  └── Auntie Li: inventory review and ration plan

Storm day 0:
  ├── All outdoor work stops.
  ├── Indoor assignments: crafting, inventory, medical checks.
  └── If firewood reads below 25, one short Zhao run, nothing more.

Daily during the storm:
  ├── Morning furnace check; burn rate is 3x.
  ├── Su Yan mental support every 3 days.
  ├── Monitor everyone's body temperature.
  └── Post-storm: one injury is acceptable, two means prep harder next time.

Sequence 3: Affinity farming with swing voters

Affinity decides whether your proposals live. Build it deliberately in the first five days.

Day 1: propose a Lu Chen benefit ("gathers near the river"). Easy pass, +5 Affinity.
Day 2-3: repeat for Xinyue ("scouts the eastern ruins").
Day 4: propose a group benefit both support ("share food equally today").
Day 5: Lu Chen and Xinyue at 60+ Affinity.
Result: a reliable 5-vote majority for most of the run.

Sequence 4: The emergency response protocol

Step 1: PAUSE. Nothing improves while you watch.
Step 2: triage in this order: firewood, injury, Sanity, food.
  ├── Injury: Su Yan treats; kit if Health below 70%.
  ├── Low firewood: Zhao goes out immediately, mild snow included.
  ├── Sanity crisis: mental support plus rest.
Step 3: one focused meeting, 1-2 proposals maximum.
Step 4: after the crisis, debrief. Note who helped, who hindered,
  and steer future assignments (and Affinity) accordingly.

Sequence 5: The perfect ending execution (loop 9+)

Days 1-30, build the foundation:
  ├── Firewood floor of 25, Zhao chops daily.
  ├── Fishing + traps + scavenging rotation for food.
  ├── Su Yan treats even minor injuries immediately.
  └── No dangerous exploration. Nothing is worth a day-20 death.

Days 31-60, mid-winter pressure:
  ├── Blizzards chain now. Prep at the first forecast sign.
  ├── Qingxuan holds a 5+ kit reserve.
  ├── Wang Ce repairs everything preemptively.
  ├── Sanity check every 3 days, treat the lowest first.
  └── Nobody's Affinity drops below 40.

Days 61-90, endgame:
  ├── Ration food below 30 units.
  ├── Assume 15-day storm cycles.
  ├── Critically injured resident: save-scum if you must.
  └── Final week: zero risks. Everyone stays home. Let it end.

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Advanced Tips

• The specialized loop strategy. Deliberate repeat deaths are the mechanic's dark side and its fastest route to victory. Let Qingxuan die of frostbite twice and by loop 5 she is nearly cold-immune, the ideal outdoor medic. The loop must fully end for transfer, so this pairs with planned collapses.
• The meeting silence trick. Residents on outdoor assignment cannot attend meetings. Schedule Auntie Li on inventory sorting before a controversial ration vote and she abstains by absence, turning a 4-4 loss into a 4-3 pass.
• The Research Facility. Northwest, behind a gate Wang Ce can repair for 5 electricity plus 2 scavenged parts. Needs a clear-weather day and Xinyue or Wang Ce on the trip. Reward: a permanent Sanity bonus for everyone and the logs that explain the memory system.
• The hidden bunker beneath Town Hall. The concealed entrance behind the main desk leads to logs detailing the memory fragment mechanics, plus +5 Sanity to the first reader.
• The Frozen Lake Cache. Breaking the ice is high risk for rare supplies. Only with full Health, daylight, and nobody else outside.
• Save discipline is a strategy. Manual saves every 2-3 in-game days mean a day-70 tragedy is a reload, not a restart. Memory only transfers on full loop completion, which is exactly why save-scumming a nearly-won run costs you nothing.

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FAQ and Common Mistakes

Why do my residents keep refusing orders? Refusals come from low Affinity, low Sanity, bad Health, or a personality mismatch, check all four. Affinity below 40 refuses nearly everything. Pass proposals that benefit the refuser specifically for two or three days and the votes flip.

How long is a full run? About 90 in-game days. Failed Easy runs last 5-15 days; a successful Normal run takes 4-6 real hours with liberal pausing.

Can I save mid-run? Yes, manual saves anywhere, no ironman mode. Reloads do not trigger memory inheritance; only completed loops do.

Does the AI need an internet connection? No. The Qwen3 model runs locally after download; the notice is license attribution.

How do I get the perfect ending? All eight alive when winter ends around day 90. No shortcuts: 8-15 loops of memory building, disciplined firewood, and calm crisis handling.

What are the PC requirements, really? A 64-bit Windows 10 machine with an i5-10400 or Ryzen 5 3600, 8 GB RAM, and a GTX 1060 6GB or RX 580. The unusual requirement is AVX2 support, which the CPU needs to run the local language model; very old CPUs without AVX2 will not launch it. Recommended specs (i7-12700, 16 GB, RTX 4060) mostly smooth the simulation when all eight residents converse.

Is it on Steam Deck? Not verified. No official Deck statement and no ProtonDB report yet; the AVX2 requirement carries over to any Proton setup, where modern Deck hardware does support the instruction set.

Which residents matter least? Xinyue and Lu Chen. Both are strong workers, but a strategy that minimizes outdoor risk makes their skills redundant, and they are the two cheapest losses in an emergency.

My loop just ended. What now? Read the loop-summary screen line by line. Every memory fragment tells you which resident now resists which threat, and that sheet is the plan for the next loop.

One tip that matters most? The furnace. Check it every morning, keep the floor at 25 units, and never let a meeting end while firewood reads under 15. Everything else in this game forgives you. The furnace does not.