THE DYEWORKS

Run a small dye house through the seasons. Grow the dyes, keep the vats alive, and dip bolts of cloth until they match the colour the town ordered.

THE DYEWORKS is a free browser incremental where the colour on the cloth is what you sell. Each dyestuff is modelled as the light it absorbs and every dip adds to it, so weld over woad comes out green, a mordant shifts the shade, and the same dips come out lighter on linen than on silk. The closer your bolt is to the ordered swatch, the more stars it earns and the more it pays.

A working day

• The fields. Weld for yellow, woad for blue, madder for red. Woad only grows in spring and summer, madder stays in the ground for three seasons, and nothing grows in winter, when the market sells dye dear.
• The vats. A bath weakens with every dip, so later bolts come out lighter. Feed a woad vat before it turns. Keep madder in its heat window or its dips come out browned.
• The orders. Take an order, dip, let the bolt air (woad comes out of the vat green and turns blue in the air), and deliver when the stars look right. A wrong colour is refused, and any bolt sells back as seconds.
• The pattern book. 40 historical colours, from watchet and Lincoln Green to murrey and sable black. Each one you match at two stars or better goes in the book with the recipe you used.
• The seasons. 3 minutes each. Spring wants pale blues and greens, winter wants navy and purples, and each season pays more for its own colours.

What opens up

12 upgrades: wool and silk, which take colour differently; iron and tin mordants that sadden or brighten; walnut and orchil for browns and purples; more field, more vats, drying racks, a copper vat that holds its heat, and an apprentice who tends the vats for you. Fill all 40 pages and the dye works is famous, and the house keeps going.

The house saves in your browser. Close the tab and the fields keep growing for up to 8 hours; the vats are covered while you are away, so nothing turns. Plays with a mouse, a keyboard or a touchscreen, on a wide screen or an upright phone.

Made with AI, said plainly: the code and the text were written with AI tools and checked before release. The crops, the vat, the props and the key art were generated as images and reduced to one fixed palette; the cloth, the swatches and the ground are drawn by the game's own code. The music and every sound effect are synthesised by the game's own code. No AI audio.

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Paid, from the same studio

• GLASSWRIGHT, $9.99. A medieval stained glass workshop for one season: choose the tracery, the palette and the finish for twelve commissions, and keep the shop solvent.
• NOCTUARY, $3.99. Sixty six nonogram plates. Each solved grid develops into a mounted specimen with its Latin name and a line from the collector's journal.