Hearthfall: the complete guide to the co-op village defense game

Hearthfall is a co-op village defense game for 1 to 4 friends. You build one medieval village together by day, and at dusk the bell tolls and monsters march on your Keep. If the wall holds, you cheer. If the Keep falls, the run is over. It plays in your browser, in early access for Pixaplay Pass members.

This guide is the whole game in one place: how a day and a night feel, who does what, the two modes, the foes and how to get your friends in. Each part links to a deeper guide. If you'd rather learn by doing, open Hearthfall and come back when the first night has had its way with you.

What does a night in Hearthfall feel like?

The afternoon is busy and a bit cosy. Someone is laying farms by the meadow, someone else is dragging a wall round the cottages, and a voice on the call says "who has stone?" for the third time. Then the light turns gold, the bell rings, and red rings appear at the edge of the map. That's where they'll come from.

Twelve seconds later the night arrives. Archers in the watchtowers start firing, the soldiers lock up at the gate, and the Master Mason sprints along the wall patching holes. When the last skeleton drops, everyone breathes out. When a wall section goes and goblins pour into the market, everyone shouts at once.

That swing, from calm building to a frantic defence and back, is what Hearthfall is about. Every dawn you count what you lost, vote on a reward, and get back to work.

What kind of game is Hearthfall?

Hearthfall is a real-time strategy game with roguelike runs, made for friends from the start. Raise a village together by day, hold the walls when the night comes for your Keep.

Three things make it different from most village defense games:

• It's co-op only. Up to four players share one village, one stockpile and one Keep. There's no versus mode and no ladder: it's all of you against the monsters.
• Everyone has a job. The village's work is split into four duties, and each duty can only do its own work. So you talk, ping and ask, and that's half the fun.
• Every run is new. A fresh valley, a foe you won't meet until the first night, random lairs and landmarks, a boon vote at each dawn, an omen at each night and surprises by day.

It's chunky pixel art, and the music shifts as the day turns to night, as a boss walks in and as you win or lose.

How does a day and a night play?

A run is a chain of days and nights, and the clock is short on purpose: there's always more to do than time to do it.

Playing alone? Every day is a quarter longer, since you're doing four people's work.

You don't have to wait for the bell. When everyone has rung it, dusk comes a few seconds later, which is a nice bold move when the walls are ready. The night ends as soon as the wave is beaten, or after five minutes, or when the last few foes give up and slink back into the dark.

By day your villagers work the farms, mills, quarries and mines. At night they hide indoors, unless the Steward asks them to keep working. You can't place or upgrade anything once night falls, only repair. That one rule shapes everything: whatever you need tonight has to be down before dark. The few seconds of dusk still count, and anything already placed keeps going up through the night.

Each dawn brings a short report: foes slain, who was lost, the best hero and tower, and which buildings fell, with buttons to rebuild them on the same spots. Then the realm votes on one of three boons. Read them: a few are cursed, which is either a brilliant gamble or a terrible idea.

The four duties: who does what?

The stockpile belongs to everyone, but each duty can only do its own work. That's the heart of Hearthfall's co-op.

The Steward keeps everyone fed and decides what the villagers work on. The Marshal trains and commands the army. The Master Mason is the only one who can upgrade buildings, the Keep included, and the only one who orders repairs, which makes them the hero of every bad night. The Warden explores the fog, claims new ground and finds out where tonight's attack is coming from.

Everyone also picks a hero for the whole run: a character you steer yourself, with two abilities. Heroes grow stronger from kills and discoveries, and a fallen one is back in about 20 seconds, so be brave.

Fewer than four of you? By default, any duty nobody picked is shared by everyone. Or turn on "Everyone runs every duty" and skip the split altogether. The Hearthfall duties guide walks through each duty's buildings, hero and best research, and how to split the work between two or three players.

What do you build, and how do you keep everyone fed?

There are 21 kinds of building to place around the Keep, nine kinds of soldier and a research tree for every duty. You start with five villagers and a small pile of food, wood, stone and gold. Here's what matters most:

• Food feeds everything. Villagers eat, soldiers eat more, and knights and siege engines eat twice as much again. Run out and your soldiers start losing health every few seconds. Farms before barracks, always.
• Build by the land. Lumber Mills want thick forest, Quarries need rock close by, Gold Mines sit on a vein, and Farms do best beside meadows.
• The Keep sets your limits. Upgrading it gives you more homes, more room for soldiers, more repair crews and the next tier of research. It's the Mason's job, so nag them.
• Towers need archers. An empty watchtower is a very tall decoration. The Marshal sends archers in.

Hover over a resource (or tap it on a phone) and the game tells you plainly whether you're making more than you use, so you can see a famine coming before it lands. The Hearthfall beginner guide turns all this into a plan for your first three days.

Campaign or Endless: which should you play?

Campaign (the default) has a goal you can win. The foe's Citadel sits across the valley, a 5,000 hp fortress sealed while any of its three lairs stands. Break a lair and a seal shatters, with gold and a relic for your trouble. Break all three and you can march on the Citadel itself. Knock it under 60% and its champion storms out to defend it. Bring it down and the valley is free, and the game tells you which day you did it.

From day 3 a creeping Blight spreads out from the Citadel a little each day. It never gets inside your borders: it's there to nudge you towards the fight, not to rush you. The Hearthfall campaign guide covers the seals, the rams and catapults and the champion fight.

Endless has no Citadel and no last night. Every fifth night the champion comes, with every lair attacking at once. There's no winning, only the story of how long your walls held, which makes it great for "one more night" sessions.

The host also picks the map: Small for a quick evening, Normal (the roomy default) or Large, from 80 to 320 tiles a side. There are three difficulties too. Pilgrim makes the monsters weaker and gives you more to start with, Knight is the game as intended, and Lord is for groups who like to suffer.

Who comes out of the dark?

Each run draws one of three foes, and you won't know which until the first night (or until you stumble on its lair guards):

• The Hollow Legion, the dead of a forgotten war: skeletons, ghouls, bone archers, flying wraiths and wall-smashing Bone Golems. Their champion is the Lich Sovereign.
• The Gorefang Horde, greenskin warbands: goblins, orc brutes, slingers and Siege Trolls, led by Warlord Gorefang.
• The Thornwild Brood, a forest turned against you: dire wolves, web-spitting bog spiders, Blight Bears and Rotwood Treants, with the Ashen Wyrm on top.

From night 4 a second foe joins the waves. Monsters get a little tougher every day, about a tenth more health each time, and nastier kinds turn up as the nights go on. From night 2 every night has an omen too: a Blood Moon makes them hit harder, the Swarm brings far more of them, Frenzy makes them fast, Grave Mist cuts your sight, and Two Fronts sends every lair at once. Sometimes it's just a Quiet Night, and you'll be suspicious all the way through it.

Days aren't safe either. Packs roam the wilds from day 2, elites guard treasure chests, bandits raid far Outposts, and events pop up: a fire, a plague of rats, a wandering knight for hire, or the Crown's tax collector. Refuse the taxman and that night's attack is bigger. He holds a grudge.

Does a bigger group make it easier?

No, and that's on purpose. The night brings more monsters for every friend at the table. Each player past the first adds about half a lone player's wave:

Champions get tougher the same way. So four players aren't four times as strong for free: they have to actually work together. In the campaign, every lair you destroy makes every later night smaller, which is a great reason to go on the attack early. The number of lairs sending foes grows too: one on the first two nights, two on nights 3 to 5, and all of them after that.

How do you play Hearthfall with friends?

Getting your group in takes about a minute:

1. One player creates a room and becomes the host. Rooms have a short 4-letter code.
2. Share the code or the invite link, or invite friends straight from the Pixaplay overlay (Shift+Tab). Friends can also hop in from their friends list while you're in a room.
3. In the war council (the lobby), everyone claims a duty and picks a hero. Everyone but the host presses Ready.
4. The host presses Begin. If someone's still choosing, the first press names them and a second press starts anyway.

No friends online? Open Find a Game to browse open rooms. Each one lights up the duties already taken, so you can see at a glance that a group is missing its Warden, and you can join a game already under way while there's a seat.

Once you're in, the game helps you talk: pings (G, or X for danger), chat, and the Tasks board, where one duty asks another to upgrade, repair, build here, train or send soldiers, answered with a single button. For more ways to get friends into any game on Pixaplay, see how to join a friend's game.

How does Hearthfall compare with Thronefall, Kingdom and They Are Billions?

Lots of Hearthfall players come from these games, and they're all great. The big difference is the size of your group: they're single-player or two-player, and Hearthfall is made for four.

• Thronefall has the same build by day, defend by night rhythm but no official co-op. See games like Thronefall you can play co-op.
• Kingdom Two Crowns has lovely co-op for two. For a bigger group, see games like Kingdom Two Crowns for bigger groups.
• They Are Billions is a solo colony defense game. Our They Are Billions alternatives with co-op compares the closest team picks.
• For the wider genre, our list of co-op RTS games to play with friends includes the big names, and says where they beat us.

How do you get into the Hearthfall beta?

Hearthfall is in early access for Pixaplay Pass members, at hearthfall.pixaplay.io. Without the Pass, the menu offers Sign in with Pixaplay and Join Pixaplay Pass instead of the play buttons. Your first Pass starts with a free week, and the Pixaplay Pass guide explains what else it opens up.

It's still being built, so it changes often, and we'd love to hear what you think. Signed in, you play under your Pixaplay name and your saves follow you to any device. Pixaplay runs one game at a time per account, so opening Hearthfall on a second device moves your game there.

Hearthfall is one of several games on Pixaplay. For the rest, start with our guide to browser games to play with friends, browse more co-op browser games, or, if you'd rather defend a crystal than a village, try Rogue Defenders, the co-op tower defense game.

The bell is about to ring. Play Hearthfall in your browser.