Jyoka -Castle town-: A Sengoku Town Builder Run on Rice

In Jyoka -Castle town-, rice is the townspeople’s food and the retainers’ pay. Set in 16th-century Japan, this town-building strategy game uses that one resource to tie town building, defensive battles, and castle sieges into a single loop. It launches on Steam (Windows) on November 15.

You play a Kunishū, a small regional lord. You can freely place more than 190 types of buildings in your town, from farming and tourism to commerce, religion, and more. New buildings appear as your domain grows.

Clear new rice paddies to raise your harvest. Taxes are set through Decrees, the laws a lord lays down. You can adjust six tax rates and the labor mobilization rate. Raise taxes and residents grow more discontent; lower them and satisfaction goes up. The more satisfied they are, the more people move in. Raise taxes, or cut them to draw people in?

You gain retainers by recruiting those who want to enter your service. Each retainer is paid in paddies as a stipend, and the koku of those paddies (their size, measured in rice yield) sets the labor and military service they owe. Expand your paddies and hand them out, and that turns directly into military strength.

Bandits, neighboring lords, and powerful daimyo all have designs on your town. To prepare, you build a castle from palisades, moats, stone walls, watchtowers, and a keep. There are six types of arms: swords, spears, long spears, bows, cavalry, and matchlocks. Retainers can be ordered to march out, train, or change their arms.

Defense is not where the game stops. Pick from more than 70 enemy castles modeled on real ones, choose the commander-in-chief and the retainers who will join, select weapons and armor, and march out. Lower enemy aggression and you can steer clear of war and put everything into building the town.

Because paddy size drives both the townspeople’s food and the retainers’ military service, each new paddy will likely mean weighing the town’s daily life against preparations for war.

The game is by sfvsoft, a solo developer. The idea started about five years ago, and development took about three years.

Language: English
Players: Single-player
As of November 6, 2026