These are really cool!
Just so you all know, we decided to go with a slightly different solution for the A24 splash, but we’ve loved every screenshot, and I’ve saved them all out in case they’re relevant for a future project. 
Thank you all again for building these great towns and sharing them.
It is such a cool idea with that splashscreen, changing with all the weathereffects! Great choice 
These towns are incredible. I’m so envious of this kind of creativity, I find it very hard to plot out a town that looks attractive and open and lively. I’ve only just started trying to play with non-standard building designs to begin with, instead of always using prefabs.
I feel like there’s an acquired skill related to proportion and visual interest going on here. I’m actually curious: fabulous city builders, can you describe how you make your towns gorgeous?
For myself, I’ve discovered that it helps to imagine the shape of the town even as I’m picking a settlement location: is this going to be a rocky town with a river and pond? Or is this going to be a farming town with lots of fields and a wall? I decide on a main attraction, like a pond or a market square or a castle, and surround that thing with items that are 2/3rds to 1/3rds the floorspace of that thing. So a market square might be surrounded by blocks of houses that are at half its size and the houses are in turn each a third the size of the block, and the houses have space between them for fountains or gardens that are 1/3rd their size and so on. I try to fill each space with something interesting.
For me it takes a lot of tries before I find a spot that makes me want to build something awesome. I have about 4x as many dead end games as ones where I build a full town. Most of the time I’ll just make a template or two then get an idea from someone’s biome they just updated or posted and then go try that out. I have a list of seeds in Wordpad with notes next to them with prompts that may work out or not once I get into the game.
I feel very similar to Stephanie. I have a somewhat clear idea about what I want to be the focus of the town. For instance, my last big town is Savage Fird. Quite some time ago, I got inspired by looking at photos of old Japanese castles and I got this picture of a castle like that, a long road and a huge wisteria tree at the other end. I imagined the houses concentrated along the road. That’s when I set out to create the tree, using Qubicle 
The town itself always unravels over time as I play. I try to start small, like with little houses with no furniture, and slowly go bigger and bigger. That makes the town feel more organic. After the city is stable enough to support the construction of the monument (castle, temple), new and fabulous houses get concentrated around it, mimicking how people always wanted to be close to a place of importance in the real world and the fact that usually only the wealthiest could afford that.
I just let myself be guided by what is there and what might fit.
Late to the party, but I just found these two older pictures and thought I’d share:
I’m really fond of medieval houses built right next to each other. As you can see building with the old builder didn’t always go smoothly. But it’s getting better with the recent changes it seems. The fortress is as old but motivation left me. Plan was to fill the space with lots of little houses like in the first picture. Well, one day, hopefully.
As for how am I deciding on the village, depends. Most of the time I’ve got kind of the perfect idea in my mind which would be sort of like the description above but with more verticality and more water. If I start a new game, though, gaming reality gets me and I’m building what seems cool, trying things out, doing this and that. Sometimes I consider it training for the “perfect” city. Well, let’s see what the future brings.
As others have mentioned already, what’s really holding me back as well is the inability to change existing builds. Where in Minecraft I would add some details and remove others over time, Stonehearth kinda stresses me out a bit because I have to plan ahead painstakingly if I want to create more elaborate village designs.
I haven’t taken many screenshots, but I’m very fond of this one. My carpenter enjoying her outdoor workshop surrounded by crafts of her design in the first completely custom building I’ve made with the New Builder. I wish I didn’t manage to catch those damn Loot markers in the background. Maybe I’ll try to retake it later.
Nice 
There is probably several screenshots like this one already but I thought they looked so cute around the fire I couldn’t resist.
Have fun, Kyth.
Is there a chimney in that house, or is that a huge fire hazard? 
i personalty enjoy the art and hope that you keep it in the style of just a character on screen i enjoy the stylized black and white on weathered paper and believe that if anything it should be art of the hearthlings or characters a mood is very important to set and i think that you already did that well as the images you have now go well with the music giving it a nice warm feeling more then that it go’s well with the ui elements in the menu if having it almost look and sound like a book
after looking through the pictures i think some of them would look perfect if they were stylized in that book art style im not a big fan of the huge town over looks and huge structures i think a good one to add would be the speech bubbles of 2 of 2 people talking you know there little conversation emotes
The safety of the Hearthlings is of the utmost importance for me. The firepit is placed on a base of stone and the house has a chimney to allow the exit of the smoke. It also includes a small protection to prevent rain from going in. 
I would love to see this sort of engagement from the team on Steam, we’re completely neglected over there. Might as well just delete our ability to even try to engage because it’s heartbreaking never getting replies.
ehhh what are you talking about? they are quite active on here actually?
