In Dark Forest Village, you are tasked with developing a village that can withstand the test of time. But the world is vast and full of terrors, so you might want to evade interaction with outsiders and keep it at a minimum.

The game is played as a sequence of turns, called years. Every year, your citizens, represented by 6-sided-dice, are rolled to determine which resources they will provide you with. You can keep them in the population pool, or drag-and-drop them into the village building slots to produce resources.
However, they won't produce resources displayed on them if they are busy in the village.
This might be a good thing, though, if some of those resources are detrimental for the settlement.

Every citizen requires an upkeep of 1 per year. The Peasants that you start with are perfectly capable of feeding themselves, but more advanced citizen classes will not be able to do so. You will still need to upgrade a part of your population to progress through the ages, but be cautious: failing to feed your population means a game over!

Sometimes, you will be presented with events after starting a new year. Those events usually have several options to choose from. You will need to choose one of them before you can proceed.

Peasants are the citizens you start with. They usually produce , enough to feed themselves and then some extra. Peasants are usually unable to perform most village jobs due to the lack of required dice symbols or class qualifications. However, they also usually don't generate any .

Laborers are the main resource-producing force of your village. Freshly-minted laborers usually start with the sides full of and can be specialized into the production of a resource by working in resource-producing jobs. They start with a on the highest side, but it can be avoided by employing laborers with the highest side rolled in the production jobs.

Scientists are the ones producing and advancing your progress. It is usually a good idea to make Scientists out of fresh Laborers to maximize production provided by the conversion. Scientists can continue studying in Academia to gain more symbols at the cost of acquiring more ; there are several tecnologies making Scientists more effective at this.

Soldiers are the primary way of producing passively. Soldiers are created via Military Training from any citizens; however, the training only converts some symbols into , while part of the rest is lost. Therefore, it might be a good idea to try several times in order to get a good Soldier. Additionally to all that, Soldiers are also unique in that they can generate , which has potentially devastating consequences on future attacks if produced early.

Specialists are the ultimate workforce of the village. Specialists are necessary in order to perform many high-tech jobs from the electric powerplants onwards; in the other aspects they are almost indistinguishable from Laborers. However, Specialists require an additional upkeep of 1 per year.

Priests are the workers whose only job is to produce . They also get a symbol on all their sides and lose all other positive symbols during their conversion.

If you are reading this, you have been noticed, and not in a good way.

The world is dark and full of dangers. Many believe that might makes right, and would not hesitate to take advantage of the weaker ones by force, or preemptively eliminate the competition. Thus, you can see a Notice meter on top of your screen. It is filled up by producing symbols. When it fills up completely, an attack will happen; the strength of said attack is displayed below the meter on the left. If the attack is successful, it is game over!

You have two options to deal with that threat. First, you can evade notice: make sure you are not producing any . One way to do it is to ensure that every citizen that rolled a symbol gets a job in the village itself; then, they cannot travel to other places and tell them of your riches, so no Notice will actually be produced. However, no other resources this citizen rolled will be produced either.

Another option is to build defences: collect enough to match or exceed the opponent's . When the notice meter fills up, the enemy attack will be deducted from your defense, but you will otherwise stay unharmed. Defeating your first attack also makes you eligible for prestige.

Research is the main driver of progress, and you can perform it on the Research tab.

Every year, your researches come mp with a selection of three technologies that you can possibly research. This selection is random and changs every year. To research a technology, you need enough . Typically, early technologies will only cost a few , but as you progress further, more expensive technologies will be added to the pool.

Some technologies unlock new buildings; you will need to construct those buildings first to get the benefit. Other technologies might boost already existing buildings, unlock new features or simply be "gateway" technologies for other areas of advancement.

When you could no longer go forward in time due to the lack of resources or the attack that is going to wipe you out, your only option is to Prestige. It is recommended to perform your first Prestige after the second attack; you can push for the third, if you want.

Prestige resets you back at the start of year 1, but you get a new currency, , awarded based on your progression. The base gain is equal to square the number of attacks you successfully defeated plus the progress towards defeating the next attack; this gain and many other aspects of your settlement can be improved by spending on various upgrades. gain is always rounded down.

Having a political capital, expressed as , allows you to change the structure of the government of your village, activating various bonuses based on a selected choice.

To change a law, select a category first. Each category has a starting law with no effect, which you can always switch to for free, and three mutually exclusive alternatives. Selecting an alternative requires expending based on the support for the specific change among the actual population, and ranges from 1 at 90% support to 25 at 10% support, with the cost changing exponentially in-between. Each option lists how each citizen class reacts to the law change: for each class, the description lists the minimal dice value needed for the citizen to support the law rather than to oppose it.

When you change a law, all citizens will return to the population pool.