Maroon LakeMake camp
Gather wood and fibre, light a fire, boil water, cook what you catch and sleep through the cold.
A season at the Bells
Maroon Lake
Make camp. Read the valley. Earn the ranger's ledger.
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What you do up here
Read the valley
Tracks, calls, weather and seasons. Every animal keeps its own hours and its own ground.
Photograph the legends
Three legendary animals keep homes for a few days at a time. Find the signs, learn the hour, get the shot.
People in the basin
Campers, anglers, rangers and photographers with names and routines of their own - follow one and see.
Surveys
After the ranger's ledger, surveys that are never the same twice.
Your hiker
Tops, bottoms, suits, shoes and hairstyles in colours of your choosing - over two thousand looks.
The goal
You arrive at the Maroon Bells with a small kit and forty dollars. Ranger Ada keeps a ledger of chapters - make camp, feed yourself, learn the valley, earn the town's trust, photograph its three legends - and signing it is the first goal.
After the ledger come Ada's surveys: each one a new arc, built from what went wrong before you arrived and how the valley behaves that season, and never the same twice. Every trophy you earn is kept in your house at the trailhead for good.
There is no last day and no trip that can be lost. You stay as long as you like.
How it plays
- Warmth, food, water and energy
- Four meters. Cold and thirst are what take people out of a basin like this, and they arrive together. A fire, a meal, a drink and a night's sleep put them back.
- Everything you need is free
- Firewood from any conifer, berries, roots, mushrooms and fish, water at any shore. A workbench turns what grows into rope, cloth, an axe, a rod, a bedroll, a pot and a tarp. Money buys reach and comfort, nothing else.
- Cooking
- A meal is a decision: every dish restores something different, and raw food costs you.
- Stalking
- Wind, cover, light, noise and what is in your pack decide what an animal makes of you. Downwind, a deer smells you at four times the distance it could see you.
- Tracking
- Prints, droppings and bedding tell you what passed, how long ago and which way. The tracking view shows them.
- Photography
- Every photograph gets a grade from its size in frame, framing, light and what the animal is doing. The grade is what it sells for; any frame still counts for the ledger.
- The legends
- Three legendary animals hold a home for a few days and mark it. Listen to the talk, read the signs, learn the hour, and be there when it shows.
- Fishing
- Cast from the shore or the boat. Somewhere in the lake is Old Maroon.
- The trailhead
- A general store, a ranger station and a marina. Reputation lowers what you pay and raises what you are paid; gear comes in tiers.
- Seasons and weather
- Ten days to a month and five seasons. Storms, snow and wind change what is out and where; the herds move with the year.
What you are about to face
Every screen below is the game as it is - no mock-ups. This is what a trip to the Bells asks of you.
Your camp and your four meters
Warmth, food, water and energy along the bottom left, the day and the weather top left, and the objective top right. Everything else on screen is what you are holding and what is near.
Fire is warmth, light and cooking
Gather wood, light the ring and keep it fed. Nights are cold; a fire at dusk is the difference between sleeping and hiking out.
Make what you need from what grows
Rope, cloth, an axe, a rod, a bedroll, a pot and a tarp - all from the valley. Money only buys reach and comfort.
A pack with a weight to it
What you carry is what you can do. Food spoils, water runs out, and a heavy pack slows you down.
Tools on a wheel
Axe, rod, camera, torch, radio: hold the key and pick. Eating, lures and the camp have wheels of their own.
Getting close is a craft
The bar at the edge is what the animal makes of you. Wind, cover, noise and your scent all count - downwind, a deer smells you long before it sees you.
Read the ground
Tracking view shows prints, droppings and bedding: what passed, how long ago and which way it went.
Photographs are the work
Frame, wait for the light and the moment. Each photograph is graded - size, framing, light, behaviour - and the grade is what it sells for.
Fishing
Cast at the water's edge or from the boat, strike on the bite and play the fish: press as the marker crosses the green. Old Maroon fights differently.
The lake is cold
Wade, swim and dive, but the cold is your limit, not your legs.
Nights and the moon
After dark the valley changes: a torch or a flashlight, a moon that waxes and wanes, and animals that only come out now.
Weather and seasons
Rain, storms, wind and snow change what is out and where. Ten days to a month, five seasons, and the herds move with the year.
Storms
Lightning over the Bells. Get your wood in before it arrives and stay by the fire.
A map you fill in
The map shows only what you have walked. Pin what matters - a den, a sign, a good shore.
Chapters, tasks and side work
The journal holds the ledger's chapters, today's tasks, side quests and the life list of everything you have seen.
The trailhead and its people
A general store, a ranger station and a marina, and people in the basin with names, camps and routines of their own.
Trade
Sell what you catch, forage and photograph; buy gear in tiers. Reputation lowers what you pay and raises what you are paid.
Ranger Ada
Ada sets the chapters of the ledger, pays for photographs and tells you, roughly, where the legends were seen.
Surveys after the ledger
Sign the ledger and Ada's surveys begin: new arcs built from what went wrong before you arrived, never the same twice.
A home to come back to
Every trophy is kept for good: a house at the trailhead, a wall of your best frames and a yard to furnish.
Your hiker
Choose a body, hair, tops, bottoms, suits and shoes in your own colours - over two thousand looks.
Everything is written down
The in-game encyclopaedia explains every mechanic, item, recipe, dish and animal, so nothing has to be looked up elsewhere.
Changelog · 0.1.2
A fix to how the game updates itself.
- Update now finishes: the updater waits for each step instead of reporting a failure while it was still working.
- The game always uses the newest updater, so fixes to updating reach you straight away.
- An update applies only the few megabytes that changed and restarts the game on the new version.
The game tells you when a new version is out, and updates itself with one click - usually a download of a few megabytes.
Every version of Maroon Lake and what it changed. →