Cave Oasis at Shylake

Sustainable community-ecosystem partnership

Cave Oasis at Shylake is a hopeful futuristic spin on a cozy farming and small town life sim game, set in a solarpunk-inspired town, in a cave on a moon. The town needs your help preparing for a series of dust storms on the surface of the moon, that threaten to block out much of the sunlight reaching the town's solar field and cave biomes. You'll get creative with sustainable farming, foraging, crafting and cooking options, emerging energy tech, environmental protection and restoration measures, and community support, to help the town survive the storms and thrive together.

Hydroponic farming

Shylake Town, a cooperative community built in a closed ecosystem of caves on Copaceta Moon, posted an open position in one of their greenhouses. You successfully applied and have arrived from Earth to put your hydroponic skills to work. Grow crops from your homeworld, and learn about new crops from other inhabited worlds, with help from other experts in your new community.

Manage the finite space by building vertical stacks and towers of planters. Connect your planters to hydroponic reservoirs, or to fish tanks for aquaponic farming. Grow sun-seeking crops in top planters and mushrooms in the shade below. Use raised platforms and ladders, and get as creative as you can with the full 3D space available for growing food.

Biomass crafting

Dive right into crafting with access to shared maker spaces in town, while you develop your skills and acquire machines and tools to level up your home workspace. The vast majority of crafting in-game utilizes biomass – materials grown in your greenhouse or the town's wild biomes. Items can be disassembled to make new creations, or composted back to raw nutrients to grow new food and materials.

Mix and match furniture parts to make unique combinations, and use a variety of crafting machines for different techniques. You can 3D print most items from wood, plant fiber, seaweed, or chitin. You can also spin and weave many of the same materials into fabric for upholstery and clothes. Try woodworking as well, or make cardboard for sturdy modern furniture. Or apply fungal mycelium to a frame and grow your creations in an incubator!

Customizable cooking

Settle into a cozy apartment under your greenhouse, and make it your own. Outfit your semi-automated kitchen with a variety of cookware for steaming, sautéing, baking, blending, juicing, and more. Combine ingredients in creative ways to produce new concoctions, and learn what your neighbors like best.

Your kitchen can also be arranged and decorated to suit your lifestyle and tastes. Add cabinets, counters, and refrigerators to organize your pantry, and give it a personal touch with a variety of designs and colors. Add light fixtures, furniture, and dividers from your crafting experiments, to organize and accentuate your whole living space.

Environmental stewardship

Shylake’s connected caves include a large forested area and an underwater lake biome. Enjoy foraging in the town's extensive food forest and lake bed, aided by tech tools to facilitate sustainable harvesting. Learn about the carefully balanced mix of organisms and their roles in the local ecosystem, and help the wildlife centers maintain the balance.

That balance is especially at risk with the coming dust storms. The entire ecosystem relies on sunlight carefully channeled into the underground environment via mirrored light shafts. As the storms grow, you'll work with your neighbors to build additional infrastructure for life support, monitor biodiversity and diagnose environment problems, research solutions and grow or craft supplies to support the wildlife and community.

Circular eco-economy

The caves form a closed ecosystem, with enough basic life ingredients to support a thriving sapient town, plus the wild biomes the town depends on and is responsible for. The game has an underlying model of all life forms and the resources they depend on. No used resources are ever completely disposed of, and no new ones can magically appear from nothing.

The game's systems encourage a balance of give and take, rather than accumulating as much as possible. Many items can be borrowed or gifted. Crafted items can be disassembled and materials reused, as well as composed back to nutrients for new growth. Learn how the town's community land trust uses economic policies and technology to support creative efforts, account for shared costs, and maintain a healthy local environment and community.

Community and social life

Join social hours in third places like the community center, library, and wildlife centers. Grab a bite at one of several eateries, or play a collaborative card game in the lounge. Try a different hairstyle at the salon, or a new outfit at the boutique next door. Pop by the music shop to change up your playlist, or roll by the cycle shop to pick up a new ride.

Befriend a wide assortment of NPCs from different extraterrestrial species and far-flung worlds, who've all chosen to make Shylake Town their home. Connect with their backstories and what brought them here, as they share their knowledge of the town and local ecology. Team up to solve problems large and small, and keep the community healthy and going strong.