Borghi is live!

Hey everyone! I'm excited to share that Borghi is now available to download — a relaxing puzzle game where you build a medieval Italian village by merging resources on an isometric board.

I wanted to write a quick devlog about how this game came to be, what's in it, and where it's going.

The idea

I've always loved games like Triple Town — that satisfying loop of placing things, watching them combine, and slowly seeing order emerge from chaos. I wanted to take that core mechanic and wrap it in something warmer: an Italian borgo growing tile by tile, with cobblestone roads forming naturally between houses and churches rising above the rooftops.

The key design goal was meditative but strategic. No enemies, no timers, no pressure — but real decisions. Every rock you place could be part of a house recipe or a merge-to-clear, and that tension is what makes it interesting.

How it plays

You start with a small patch of grass, a few bushes and rocks, and three cards in your hand. Place resources on the board, and when the right combination touches — 2 bushes + 1 rock, for example — they merge into a house. Houses are permanent, they expand your land, and roads appear automatically between them.

As you build, you level up and unlock new resources, recipes, and building types:

• Level 1 — Bushes + Rocks → Houses
• Level 2 — Trees and Logs unlock, Wells and Crosses become available, Crosses evolve into Churches
• Level 3 — Wheat arrives, Wells combine into Towers, Coins lead to Shops
• Level 4 — Cows and Farms, a 4th card in your hand, rare Statues appear
• Level 5 — Wells can evolve into the Town Hall

The cross-chain recipes — where you need different resource types touching — are what give the game its puzzle depth. You can't just spam one type and hope for the best.

Environmental obstacles

Early playtesting revealed a problem: the board was too open. You could place anything anywhere, and there was no real challenge. The solution was rock clusters and thickets — natural obstacles that spawn on the map and block tiles. Now you have to plan around them or spend a precious hammer card to clear them. This one change transformed the game from "pleasant but boring" to "pleasant but I need to think."

The visual style

All the sprites are isometric pixel art, and I'm really happy with how the villages look when they come together — the dirt roads forming between buildings, a church towering over the houses, farms on the outskirts. The board starts as open countryside and gradually transforms into a living village.

What's next

This is version 1.0, and I have ideas for where to take it:

• Harbor/port buildings that interact with the water tiles
• Animated elements — people walking, cows grazing, smoke from chimneys
• More biomes and visual variety
• Web version for playing directly in the browser
• Balancing and polish based on your feedback

Try it and let me know!

I'd love to hear what you think. Does the difficulty feel right? Are the recipes intuitive? Did you get stuck anywhere? Drop a comment below or reach out — every piece of feedback helps shape where Borghi goes next.

Thanks for playing! 🏘️