ColdRidge is a cowboy exploration game that's like playing just the exciting first turns of a Civilization campaign

A team of veteran strategy game developers gone indie is working on a neat new concept to release this year: ColdRidge, a game about lone explorers prospecting an ever-changing frontier with a delightful American West aesthetic and also singing French cowboys. Each year in ColdRidge you strike out from a central town to finish missions for the guild, prospecting the area around you for what you need. 

Finish enough missions before year's end and you can make the money you need to survive, spending your excess on permanent bonuses. Fail to make the ever-rising guild tax and you'll get left in the cold when winter comes to refresh the whole frontier.

Each month, however, you can only take on a few contracts and travel so far: Eight hexes of movement. So if you need to find six deer and five trees you'll have to be quick and efficient, gambling with what might be in the unrevealed map compared to what you know about already. It gets harder as you go, too: When a month finishes and you turn in contracts the guild immediately depletes everything you've marked for taking.

I spent some time with a pre-release demo and found it a very compelling idea: Play just the first, exciting part of a Civilization-like 4X over and over by exploring out from the first settlement. You're trying to mark resources, plan routes, and be efficient with how your move not only uncovers new map but how it exploits the resources you pass over. Leave a huge barren swathe near the start and your other expeditions that year have to waste movement getting past it to the good stuff.

ColdRidge is made by Frog Collective, a studio founded by the former art and tech lead developers at Amplitude, a studio famous for the Endless series of 4X strategy games and for 2021's Humankind. Frog Collective intends to release one to two small indie games a year.

The public version of the demo for ColdRidge is set to release on July 23. You can find ColdRidge on Steam. You can find Frog Collective on their site.