What is Hawthorn?
A charming co-op sandbox RPG and village life sim set in Windermere Valley. You rebuild an abandoned lakeside village, recruit NPC villagers, farm, craft, fish, explore and celebrate the seasons.
What is Hawthorn?Loading
Hawthorn is still in development with no announced release date. Pages state which build they describe · Fact base last reviewed September 13, 2026.
In development · Demo & playtest details change
Practical guides, structured game data and a dated development log for Hawthorn, the co-op village RPG by NEARstudios. Every gameplay claim is labelled with the source and the date we checked it.
The four questions almost every visitor arrives with, answered in one sentence each.
A charming co-op sandbox RPG and village life sim set in Windermere Valley. You rebuild an abandoned lakeside village, recruit NPC villagers, farm, craft, fish, explore and celebrate the seasons.
What is Hawthorn?No. Steam lists the release date as “To be announced” and NEARstudios has not published a launch window. The studio has said its playtest process is preparing the game for Early Access.
Release date statusYes, but small-scale. Steam lists single-player, online co-op and LAN co-op, and the current build runs private sessions you invite Steam friends into.
Multiplayer guideA public Proof-of-Concept Demo is downloadable and focuses on village building. Wider access runs through the Village Council playtests, which require a supporter tier that includes a Steam key.
Demo & playtest accessFour different routes, depending on how much you want to spend and how early you want in.
Guides are written for the current playtest build. Each one states which build it describes and what is still unconfirmed.
What to do in your first hour in Windermere, and the order to do it in.
Step through the public Proof-of-Concept Demo from start to finish.
How sessions work, and how to split work between players.
Housing, decor, layout and how villagers react to what you build.
One page per topic. Pages show what is confirmed, what was seen in a playtest build, and what we are still waiting on official numbers for.
Tools only ship when their inputs are real. An interactive map and a formula calculator stay on the roadmap until NEARstudios publishes coordinates and numbers we can verify.
Filter every tracked species, system, item, resource and location by type and how well it is verified.
LivePick your group size and get a job split that matches how Hawthorn actually delegates work.
LiveTrack first-session and village-setup goals. Saves to your browser.
PlannedPlanned — but only after coordinates and formulas are officially published. No invented numbers.
Official posts only. Each entry lists the pages it invalidates, so nothing on this site quietly goes stale.
The third and widest playtest phase opened to Legends, Stewards, Homesteaders and equivalent supporters, closing the three-week August window.
Phase two opened to Royal Settlers, Philanthropists, Trailblazers and equivalent supporters, with new supporters able to join by pre-ordering a tier that includes a Steam key.
NEARstudios formalised a three-phase playtest structure — Draft, Preview and Proof — modelled on editing a storybook. The team said the same process may be reused for Early Access updates if it works.
Hawthorn has no release date and its systems are still moving, so a wiki that guesses is worse than no wiki. This site separates what NEARstudios has confirmed, what has only been seen in a playtest build, and what still needs verification. We publish no search-volume claims, no invented drop rates and no fake calculators.