Saltern — Salt Pond Harvest

Flood a bed with seawater and watch the sun turn it six colors — sea, jade, chartreuse, apricot, rose, crust. Skim early for cash, or hold for the crust and rake it.

Salt isn't mined here. It's farmed.

Saltern is a dense incremental game about running a solar salt works, one pond at a time. Flood a dry bed with seawater and the sun starts taking the water back: the brine climbs through six visible colors — sea blue, jade, chartreuse, apricot, rose, white crust — as it concentrates. The salt mass never changes. What changes is what it's worth: skim a jade pond for quick cash, or hold your nerve to the crust and rake it for five times the price.

The master move is the pump. Consolidate two half-evaporated ponds into one crystallizer, re-flood the freed bed, and suddenly you're not tending puddles — you're running a pipeline, feeders in front and crystallizers behind, exactly how real salterns have worked for two thousand years.

• Nine ponds, six visible brine stages — your whole works readable in one glance • Harvest timing is the economy: jade skims ×0.5, apricot ×1.4, rose ×2.2, whole crust ×5 • Pump brine between ponds to build feeder/crystallizer pipelines and keep every bed busy • Shallow brine evaporates faster — deep beds hold more, thin layers finish sooner • The mistral: a dry wind that triples the sun while it blows • Six works upgrades: windmill pumps, clay lining, brine shrimp, rakes, gates, barrows • Season's End: sell the works for fleur de sel — each petal makes every future harvest 10% dearer, and buys nine permanent improvements • The sun keeps working while you're away (up to 14 h) • No account, no internet, nothing collected — the whole works lives on your phone

The beds are dry and the tide is in. Open the gate.