Holm.

Holm is a small island that you shape with your fingers, and that then gets on with living. Raise hills, cut rivers, paint forests and found towns. Turn on the living world and the island starts keeping its own history: towns grow, roads follow old herd trails, storms get names, and every place remembers what happened to it.

Your first five minutes

1. On the home screen, tap Shape this holm. You start with one tile of land, already shaped.
2. Choose Sculpt at the bottom, then hold a finger on the land to raise it. Switch to Lower and hold near the coast to let the sea in.
3. Choose River and swipe from a hill down towards the sea.
4. Choose Paint, pick Forest, and brush it over the slopes.
5. Choose Settle and tap a spot beside the river to found a hamlet. Tap it again to grow it.
6. Choose Orbit and tap anything, a town, a lake, a peak, to read about it.

When you want the island to carry on without you, tap Living world.

Moving around

• Drag with one finger to move across the map (in Orbit and Settle).
• Pinch to zoom. Zoom right in and the tile you are looking at sharpens to double detail.
• Twist two fingers to turn the view, and drag two fingers up or down to tilt it.
• In Sculpt, River and Paint, one finger works the land, so use two fingers to move the view.
• Tap the compass rose to fly back out to the whole island, with north at the top.
• Tap the Holm. title at the top left to go back to the home screen.

The five tools

The bar along the bottom chooses what a touch does.

Orbit

For looking. Tap any named place to open its card: what it is, what it is like, its numbers and its story.

Sculpt

Hold to raise the land or, with Lower chosen, to sink it. Drag to sweep the brush across a ridge or a valley. The Size rail at the side changes the brush. Lower the ground far enough and water floods in; raise it high enough and it carries snow.

River

Swipe to draw a river exactly where your finger goes. It runs from the high end to the low end, widens as it grows, and joins any river it meets. Or tap where it should rise, tap where it should end, then drag the dots to bend it and tap away to accept.

Paint

Choose a biome from the strip and drag to paint it. Natural rubs paint out and lets the land go back to whatever its height and climate suggest. With Lens on, a little readout follows your finger with the biome, temperature, moisture and height underneath it.

Settle

Tap dry land to found a settlement. Tap it again to grow it: hamlet, village, town, then city. Hold on it to remove it. Tap a ruin on dry ground to bring people back to it.

Undo, at the bottom left, takes back your recent changes.

Land and water

• Water finds its own level. Any hollow you dig fills into a pond or a lake, and the larger ones get names. Cut through to the coast and the sea comes in.
• Height matters. Trees thin out towards the treeline, peaks above the snowline turn white, and high towns grow more slowly.
• Rivers spill over cliffs as waterfalls, fan out into deltas at the sea, and get bridges or ferries wherever roads need to cross.
• Add tile opens more of the world. Tap it, then tap one of the + signs on the edge of your land. A holm can grow to eight tiles.
• Randomize World reshapes all of your current land at once and starts it over: settlements, wonders and history go with the old shape. For a brand-new one-tile island, use Another island on the home screen instead. Your old island is saved.

Biomes

Painting a biome changes what grows there and the local climate: its temperature and moisture.

Meadow

Open grass and flowers. Good farming country.

Savanna

Warm grassland with scattered trees.

Forest

Dense woods. They cool the climate and shelter towns from the wind.

Jungle

Hot, wet and thick with trees and palms.

Marsh

Reeds and standing water. Marshes cool the climate and soak up a storm surge.

Desert

Hot, dry sand and cactus.

Badlands

Dry, eroded, rust-coloured ground.

Ashland

Grey volcanic ground.

Tundra

Cold, low and treeless.

Glacier

Ice.

Unpainted land is natural: it chooses its own cover from height, latitude and nearby water.

Settlements

• Four sizes: hamlet, village, town and city. The island holds up to thirty settlements.
• Roads join neighbouring settlements on their own, bending around hills, wonders and water. Bridges, ferries and harbours appear where they are needed.
• Around each town come farmland, livestock, boats on the water and, at night, lights in the windows.
• Cities sprawl along their roads, and their great families build villas in the hills outside.
• In a living world, settlements grow on their own: faster on the coast and on the roads, slower high up. Settlers from beyond the map sometimes found villages of their own.
• A settlement that floods, or falls to a storm or an eruption, becomes a ruin. Its survivors move to a neighbouring town, and its card keeps a eulogy.

Every settlement card has a Chronicle: when it was founded and by whom, how it grew, the storms it weathered, the trails its roads follow, and the places around it it depends on.

Wonders

Wonders are the island's landmarks: sea stacks, arches, canyons, geysers, waterfalls, volcanoes, fjords, crystal spires, floating isles and more. A few appear on their own as new land is opened. You earn the rest.

• Open Wonders at the bottom of the screen. How to find more lists the goals that earn them: carve a river, raise a snow-capped peak, grow a city, weather a named storm, explore all eight tiles, and others.
• Each goal earns a wonder of a given rarity: common, uncommon, rare or legendary.
• To place one, tap its card, then tap the map where it should go. The land reshapes itself around it.
• Heritage wonders, such as stone circles, long barrows, hill figures and hillforts, are raised by the people who live on the island. You earn them by growing settlements.

Places and lore

• Everything with a name can be tapped: peaks, ranges, lakes, bays, rivers, roads, forests, settlements, wonders and the small places in between.
• Lore sites turn up across the island: hermits' columns, woodcutters' camps, shrines, standing stones, shipwrecks, wizards' towers, lost temples. In a living world they are settled, abandoned and taken over again as the years go by.
• Some places only show themselves at night. Turn on nightfall and look for what is found by moonlight.
• Turn Labels off for a clean view of the land.
• Names and stories change with the lens: a fantasy chronicle, a gazetteer entry or a survey register.

Nature at work

Much of the island looks after itself, and some of it changes the world for the people living there.

Hunting grounds

Herds of deer, bison, caribou, wildebeest, elephants and more, chosen to suit the climate. They drift with the seasons and lie down at night.

Herd traces

Each herd wears a faint trail down to water and to its salt lick, and walks it now and then. Trails detour around towns. Roads between towns prefer to follow them, and the towns remember it.

Salt licks

Salty ground the game comes to. Settlers sometimes follow the herds and found a village beside one.

Beaver dams

In a living world, beavers settle on gentle, wooded streams in cool country. They dam the stream into a new pond. Years later they move on, the dam fails, and the pond drains into a beaver meadow.

Reefs and mangroves

On warm coasts near the equator. They take the surge out of a hurricane and stop the coast behind them eroding. Reefs bleach if the climate runs hot.

Seabird rookeries

Offshore rocks and sea cliffs, white with guano and circled by birds. Coastal towns nearby grow faster on the guano.

Fish, whales and salmon

Fishing grounds in the shallows, whales and dolphins offshore, and salmon leaping the waterfalls in autumn.

When a large town grows up beside a hunting ground or a salt lick, the game moves away after a few years, and the town's chronicle notes it.

Time, seasons and night

• The bar at the top shows the season and the year. Tap pause to stop time, and tap 1× to run it at 4× or 12×. A year takes about two and a half minutes at 1×.
• Seasons turn the leaves in autumn, bring snow in winter and freeze the lakes. Near the equator, wet and dry seasons take their place.
• The moon button brings nightfall: lights come on in the towns, along the roads and in the harbours.
• The ⓘ button opens World info: where the island lies on the globe, which hemisphere it is in, its highest peak, how much of it is water, how many landforms it has, and the sound switch.
• Sound starts off. Switch it on in World info for wind, surf, rivers, birds, bells and the bustle of the towns as you zoom in.

The living world

In chill mode the island waits for you. Tap Living world and it carries on by itself. Tap Back to chill whenever you like: storms pass, the sea settles and the land heals, but ruins stay ruins.

Climate

Settlements warm the air, and big cities warm it far more than villages. Forests and marshes cool it. The thermometer at the top shows the balance; tap it for the details. Run hot and the seas rise, the snowline climbs, reefs bleach, and storms come more often and harder.

Weather

Storms are named and tracked, and a warning appears at the top of the screen; tap it to fly to the storm. What comes depends on where the island lies:

• Hurricanes (typhoons or cyclones in other seas) at most once a year, late in the warm season, between the tropics and mid-latitudes. They darken the sky, flash with lightning and push a surge onto low coasts.
• Tropical depressions and storms in warm seas: rain and a modest surge.
• Tornadoes cut narrow tracks, and waterspouts walk over warm shallows and collapse at the shore.
• Derechos, long lines of storms, sweep across flat lowlands and lay woods down flat.
• Blizzards bury cold towns, and wildfires burn until they reach water or marsh.

Burned and flattened ground heals over a few seasons. Marshes, reefs and mangroves blunt a surge, and woods around a town break the wind.

Volcanoes

A volcano breathes a thin column of smoke for years. Rarely it rumbles, then erupts: lava runs downhill in rivers, buries towns in its path and scorches the ground, which later comes back greener than before.

The Erosion slider, shown in a living world, sets how quickly the land weathers and smooths.

The three lenses

• Fantasy is a storybook map: old settlements, a chronicler's tales and storms named like figures out of legend.
• Realistic is the same island now: modern towns, a gazetteer's facts, real-world names and named hurricanes.
• Topographic is a survey sheet: contours, hachures, grid references and register entries.

Switch at any time. Nothing about the island changes, only how it is drawn and told.

The almanac

The book button at the top opens the almanac:

• Photo frames a picture of the view, with or without names, to save to your phone.
• Map draws the whole island as a finished map in the current lens.
• The holm, year by year keeps a picture from each year; tap Play to watch it change.
• Chronicle lists everything that has happened, year by year. Tap an entry to fly there.

News appears at the bottom of the screen as it happens. When a message has an arrow, tap it to go there.

Saving and sharing

• Your island saves itself as you play, in this browser.
• Your worlds, on the home screen, lists every island you have made. Tap one to open it. To delete one, tap its delete button twice.
• Share link, in the almanac, makes a link to the island as it is now. Whoever opens it gets their own copy to play with; your original stays as it was.
• Save file keeps a .holm file, the safest way to back an island up or move it to another device. Open file brings one back.

Islands live in this browser. Clearing its site data deletes them, so save a file of any island you care about.

On a computer

Drag to pan, right-drag to orbit, and use the wheel to zoom. Hold Space and drag to pan while using a tool.

O S V P T

Orbit, Sculpt, River, Paint, Settle

1 2 3

Fantasy, Realistic, Topographic

[ ]

Brush size

Ctrl Z or U

Undo

Arrows + − Q E

Move, zoom, turn

H

Back to the whole island

N

Nightfall

I

World info

M

Sound on or off

W

Wonders

R

Randomize World

?

This guide

Esc

Close or cancel

Tips

• Towns on a river mouth or a sheltered bay grow fastest, and get harbours.
• Ring a coastal city with marsh or forest: it keeps the climate in balance and blunts the storms.
• Draw rivers before you found towns, so the roads have something to bridge.
• For beaver ponds, draw a long, gentle stream through forest in cool country, then let a few years pass.
• Visit at night now and then. Some places are only found by moonlight.
• Tap the news. Most of what happens on a living island is told once, and then only remembered in the chronicles.