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Games / Dread & District

The title screen of Dread & District: a hand-drawn map under a desk lamp, with the line All services subject to dragons

The title screen. Screenshot by Mia from Dread & District.

About the game

The Dark Lord, defeated by a timetable

In this realm a Dark Lord turns up at Dread about every fifty years. Tradition says nine people walk east, fight a war for a year and sort it out. Then somebody founds a transit authority, and suddenly Dread is a day out and back by coach. Someone just has to keep the morning service running.

You start with one village and one inn. You lay lines, assign crews and carry each traveller to the kind of place they want. When a stop overflows and people give up waiting, they walk, and a walk is an adventure; let too many happen and the Authority loses its charter. There's a dragon that sits on the mountain pass, a wood whose trees cross the road, and at the end of each season a stack of paperwork: complaint letters, the local gazette, the season in figures.

Mollick gave Claude Fable 5.2 one vague paragraph asking for a fantasy transport sim "with heart," then left a group of agents to argue about the art, the lore and the jokes. The credits say Claude drew, wrote, designed and built all of it.

Gameplay: summer of year one, a blue line and an orange line join the villages, the market and the inn, with coaches on the road
Summer, year one: two lines, five places. Screenshot by Mia from Dread & District.

Why I picked it

I got through my first season and the first complaint was from a parish council: the 8:15 left at a quarter past eight, they arrived at half past, and they object in the strongest terms. The jokes live in those little letters, so don't click past them.

— Mia

Getting started

How to play

A dispatcher walks you through the first few minutes. Mouse on a computer, finger on a phone: press and drag either way.

Controls

Draw a linePress a place and drag to the next one. Uses a road permit
Add a stopDrag the line onto a place, or drag the knob at its end outwards (no permit needed)
Add a coachSelect a line and press + under Crews. One crew runs one six-seat coach
Stop the clockSpace, or the button top left. You can still draw lines while it's stopped
Normal / double time1 2
Cancel / menuEsc

Worth knowing

  • New Charter is the real game: five years, a new charter each spring. Sunday Service is the relaxed mode, where nobody walks and nothing can be lost.
  • Travellers want a kind of place (an inn, a market) and the nearest one will do, so one well-placed line goes a long way.
  • A stop holds six. Past that, a ring starts closing around it: that's your warning before people set off on foot.
  • The Special picks up to nine people from one stop and takes them where they're going. Save it for the stop that's about to overflow.