r/educationalgifs

I like maps because they turn lists of dates into spatial relationships. Timelapses take that one step further: compress three centuries into seconds, and a seemingly static map begins to feel alive.

I made this from historical data compiled for the map of my solo-developed game. It shows 147 conventional city-founding dates and ten historic route corridors. Political borders are omitted because no single boundary layer would be accurate across the entire period. The dates do not represent first human settlement, and the routes are not a complete history of colonization and migration.

The map belongs to Salt and Soil, a colony sim about one family living through a changing American frontier. Its public Steam Playtest is open through August 19.

I’m the solo developer of the Salt and Soil. I wanted succession to feel like a life decision rather than a character-select screen: stay with the older household and everything they built, or follow their adult child inland and start again with more time ahead. Both branches remain on the map; you only control one.

The wider game is a historical family and settlement strategy sim rather than a day-to-day Sims-like game. Characters age, form households, inherit property and live through a world that keeps changing around them.

Salt and Soil: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4551060/Salt_and_Soil_A_Frontier_Family_Sim

AI disclosure: the game uses a language model at runtime to write short narrative events from the current game state, and AI tools have assisted me with parts of the code.