If you prefer to watch a video introducing the general game concepts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rjlAywyJMY

In Exipelago you start with a small group of villagers on a randomly generated island. The challenge is to grow your tribe, survive and build an empire.

To do so, so have to gather stuff already on this island. Harvesting plants, growing your own farms, digging caves (and gather precious stone in the process) and use it to build impressive structures on your island.

There is a day/night cycle, your villagers need to sleep and they also need light sources. Without light, they will move/act considerably slower, so make sure to have important areas lit during dark hours.

They also need food, so establishing a farming chain is one of the first tasks you have to do, as crops need their time to actually grow.

Over time more villagers will arrive to your island and join your tribe

The game was actually developed with 4K Screens in mind and the User-Interface can be scaled to better fit to your own device better.

The game tries to aproximate which scaling to use for the UI, but it may not be always right.

So one of the first things you wanna do is from the Main Menu go to Settings and select the UI Scale which fits your situation best. Currently, these changes needs a restart of the game. Luckily Exipelago has quick loading times :-)

BIG - for 4K Screens
MEDIUM - for Full HD
SMALL - small Screens / Resolution

Be aware, the game does not supply Low Resolution Sprites for the User Interface, so playing the game on low resolutions may currently result in low UI fidelity due to the high scaling involved.

To move around the map, you can use the W,A,S,D Keys or moving the mouse while holding down the right mouse button.

Zoom: Mousewheel
Rotate: Hold middle mouse button while moving the mouse (or Q,E keys)

Spacebar: Pauses the game

"F": when a villager is selected (click on it), this key will lock the camera to that villager. Moving the camera away will release the lock (you can still rotate the camera while locked onto a villager)

Moving "vertically":

In Exipelago you can "slice" the view to see underground. To do so, you can use the according Buttons on the top left (which will also display your currently viewed "level") or the PageUp/Down Keys.

If you right-click on a floor while holding the "Ctrl" Key, the view level will immediatly jump to that floor

Pressing "Ctrl" + a number key [1-9] you can set a shortcut to your currently viewed level. So when you currently looking underground at level -5 and click Ctrl+1, this level is now saved as a shortcut. Just press "1" afterwards to quickly go to that level.

Other keys:

"R" Key: Rotating blocks or items, during placement

"+" / "-" Key: When using a tool from the Action Bar, you can set the vertical range of it, where "+" will extend it upwards and "-" will extend it downwards. This is usefull, when digging to make sure to always dig at least 2 blocks of height, as villagers need a vertical clearance of at least 2 blocks

F10 Key: With this you can visually toggle the trees visually without going into slice view

NumPad: Gives some slow moving camera control. 7/9 rotate, 4/8/2/6 for panning, 1/3 for zooming. Can be combined.

NumPad 5: Toggle Visibility of Game UI for making screenshots or videos. Be aware clicking may still trigger Elements on the GUI while not visible.

For building stuff you will need ressources. You can get ressources by gathering them from the map or by crafting.

The basic ressources currently in the game are wood, soil and stone.

To get wood, you basically fell trees. To do so, use the Action Bar at the bottom of the screen, click agricultural button and select "chop". You now have the chop tool activated. Simply click on tiles with a tree on it, or click&hold to drag an area. Villagers will now fell those trees - which will result in getting logs.

Each sort of tree will yield a different sort of log, which will transform into a distinct sort of plank and so on. The same is true for stones etc

You can also "harvest" stones on the ground, bushes and other plants.

To gather stone, you have to dig underground, where you will find lots of stone (even differenty types of stone) - use the games slicing function and the "Dig" Tool from the Action Bar.

Be aware, that villagers need at least 2 blocks of vertical clearance to go anywhere - so when digging underground make sure, you dig at least 2 vertical blocks to make a tunnel (use +/- Keys to extend the tools range)

As soon as you have logs, you get the ability to actually craft things out of it. Like planks or torches. Many of those things need some sort of workshop to be created.

For planks, you need a wood workshop. Click "Zones" from the Action Bar and select "Wood Workshop" afterwards. Zone the workshop anywhere on the map.

A workshop alone can't do much - it needs tools to be operated. In order to make planke, we need at least a sawbuck. Luckily it only needs logs to be built. So In the Action Bar, click on the icon with the "Hammer" on it, navigate to "Tools" and select "Sawbuck".

Once selected, place the sawbuck in your freshly made Wood Workshop. You can press the "R" key to rotate the item before placement.

Once placed, a villager will get some logs and build the sawbuck.

Now you are ready to make planks. Deselect any tools (a click with right mouse button will do that or press ESC) and leftclick on your Wood Workshop Zone on the map. A Window will open where you can add recipes and orders for your villagers.

Select "Plank" from the list and a new area will pop out, where you can define more details about the job. Clicking on "Queue" will add that job to the zones order queue and will eventually be served by a villager.

A villager is considered the size of 2 blocks - so if you want them to be able to pass an area, make sure that area has a vertical clearance of at least 2 blocks.
When using tools like digging, make sure you use the +/- keys to raise your tools vertical range for easier digging.

If you experience a sudden framerate drop or villagers starting to take a long time until they do something, have a little check around the map if any of them is stuck somewhere or if there are a lot ressources being unreachable. This could clog up the worker processes currently. When I catch such issues I fix them, but for now they can happen here and there.

In case your game crashes for whatever reason, chances are good you have a savefile created which is called "crash.sav" - with this you can try to reload the game.

There is currently no auto-save - be aware. It will be added at some point but is not yet in the game. So regulary save your game manually for now

Villagers cant see in the dark - so if they have to operate in the dark, they will move & work significantly slower - provide them some light to make them work efficiently in the dark