The Last Summer Holiday

Six tales. Six dreams. One goodbye.

Seven Nights on the Steppe is a cozy first-person story game about the summer you spend with your grandparents on the Mongolian steppe. Every day they teach you how their life works. Every night Grandpa tells you a folktale, and you dream your way into it.

LIVE THE OLD WAYS

Raise the ger, the round felt home of the steppe, piece by piece in nine stages. Gather dry argal to light the stove, milk with both hands, and haul water from the well for the herd. Every day Grandma teaches you one of the seven white foods, the dairy of the steppe, from the öröm cream that sets overnight to the pressed byaslag cheese. Each one you make goes on the table in colour. The ones still to learn wait there in grey.

HEAR THE TALE, FIGHT THE DREAM

At bedtime the fire burns low and Grandpa tells a real Mongolian folktale. Then you are inside it. Take the fifteen-headed black mangas one head at a time with your bow. Bring down a giant serpent and finish it with the stone. Shoot down the burning suns of Erkhii Mergen's tale. Ride the winged horse of the first morin khuur, walk the road of Börte Chono, the blue wolf, and bring the herd home through a storm with Tsagaan Övgön, the White Old Man. If a dream knocks you down, you get up and go again.

SAY GOODBYE

On the last night there is no tale. Grandma reads your summer diary back to you: every page you wrote, every word they taught you. Then it is time to go home.

NOTHING CAN BE LOST

No fail state, no currency, no score. A clumsy stroke is just a slow one, nothing in the waking camp is an enemy, and the night waits until you go to bed.

FEATURES

• Seven days and seven nights at your grandparents' summer camp
  
• Six real Mongolian folktales told at bedtime, and six dreams to step into
  
• Three dream fights: the mangas, the serpent and the seven suns
  
• Raise a ger in nine stages with your own hands
  
• Learn seven white foods, from öröm to byaslag
  
• Ride in the horse race at the local naadam
  
• A summer diary in your own words, read back to you on the last night
  
• No fail state, no currency, no score
  
• First person by default, third person in the settings
  
• Original score, synthesised for the game, inspired by the morin khuur, tovshuur, khöömii and khengereg
  
• Terrain built from real elevation data of the steppe the developer's grandparents herded