Lumber Jack and Jill

If a tree falls in the forest, it lands somewhere. Usually not where you wanted.

Lumber Jack is a tree-felling game where the fall is simulated, not scripted. There is no animation waiting to play. There is a trunk, its lean, the wood you leave behind, and gravity taking a vote. Where the tree ends up is arithmetic — yours, mostly.

THE CUT

Read the tree first: which way it leans, where the crown hangs heavy, and whether there is a cabin standing in the fall zone. Then aim the face notch by dragging around the trunk, and saw it in one cut at a time — the level cut, then the slope, and the block drops out. Place your back cut above the notch, drive it, and drive wedges into the kerf if the tree is sitting against you.

Every cut is a decision with a consequence. Cut the back cut below the notch and you leave a shelf the trunk has to split through — that is a barber chair, and it comes back at head height. Cut the face too deep and there is no hinge left to steer with. Take too little relief and the fibres hold until the trunk comes apart. None of these are scripted accidents; they are the same moment balance resolving badly.

The solver is deterministic. The same tree and the same cuts give the same fall, every time, because technique is only worth learning if it is repeatable.

SEVEN TREES, AND THEY ARE NOT THE SAME TREE

Douglas fir, ponderosa, lodgepole, Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, western larch and quaking aspen — the species that share an interior mountain-West slope across its elevation bands. Each has its own size, weight, crown, lean tendency and, most importantly, its own wood. Aspen is short-fibred and lets go early, which is why it chairs on people who cut it like a fir.

FOUR WAYS TO WATCH IT

From the side, for reach and how close that cabin really is. From above, the only view that shows bearing and distance at once. From behind Jack, where the side lean finally becomes visible. And the close-up of the bar in the wood, where the cutting actually happens.

CAMP

Logs are wood; coin is money. Sell at the lumber yard, where a rack of aspen is worth four times a rack of lodgepole. Spend it on a bigger saw, on safety kit that takes a share of what a bad day costs you, and on fuel — and if you run the tank dry there is a crosscut in the truck, worked by swinging the phone.

Put a tree through the cabin and you pay to rebuild it. You can go into debt. The only way out is the one that was always there.

A NOTE ON THE REAL THING

The technique in here is real technique and it is modelled seriously, but this is a game and it is not a course. Felling is among the most dangerous work there is. Do not learn it from a phone.

This is an early release and it is still growing. If something feels wrong under your thumb, that is exactly what we want to hear about.