The year
Spring, summer, autumn and winter: how long each lasts and what changes as the year goes round.
Thole has a year. It runs on real time, so one year is 28 days, about four weeks, and each season lasts about a week. Everybody shares the same year, the same way everybody is under the same sky. The season and the day of it are shown beside the clock at the top of the screen, and if you hold your finger or mouse on it you'll get a line about what it's like out.
The seasons don't flip over from one to the next. The year gets colder and warmer gradually, so the first frosts come in late autumn, the snow starts to stay on the ground as winter comes in, and the thaw takes a few days. Each year's a little different, too. The cold can come a day early or late, and some winters bite harder than others.
| Season | Days | What it's like |
|---|---|---|
| Spring | 7 | The frost comes out of the ground and it's planting weather again. New green on the trees and grass, nights still on the cool side. |
| Summer | 8 | Long days, short nights and the best growing of the year. No chill in the daytime at all. |
| Autumn | 7 | The leaves and the grass turn gold and red. The nights get colder, and late in the season the first frost stops anything still growing. |
| Winter | 6 | Snow on the ground, long nights, lakes frozen over in the deep of it, and cold that bites through the day as well as at night. |
Days and nights#
A day is still 90 minutes all year round, but how much of it is dark changes with the season. In high summer the dark lasts about 16 minutes. At the turn of spring and autumn it's about 20, and in the deep of winter it's 34. The light goes earlier in the evening, and dawn comes at the same time whatever the season, so a night's sleep always ends the same way.
Snow and ice#
When it's cold enough, rain comes down as snow, and a heavy storm of it is a blizzard. Snow starts staying on the ground late in autumn, a bit in patches to begin with and then right over everything: the fields, the roofs, the tops of the pines. It lingers a while after the worst of the cold, so you'll still have snow on the ground as the thaw comes in.
Lakes, ponds and marshes freeze over in the deep of winter, starting from a thin grey skin and ending up thick and white. Moving water lags behind and never quite freezes solid, so a river is never fully safe, and the sea doesn't freeze at all. The north freezes a little sooner than the south.
Growing things#
Crops and flowers only grow while it's above freezing, so the growing year runs from spring through to the first frost in late autumn. Berry bushes stop putting out berries once the frosts start. Plan your planting so it's all in before the frost.
Knowing what's coming#
The Lantern keeps an almanac at the top of its front page. It tells you where we are in the year and what's coming next, like the first hard frost, the snow, the lake ice holding, midwinter, the sap running and the thaw, and roughly when each one is due. It's worked out from the same year everyone's living in, so if the paper says the frost is a day or so off, it is.
In the game you don't have to go looking. When one of those is a day or so off, a small note with a lantern on it shows up beside the clock, and you can tap it to read what the paper says. A warning comes up at the top of the screen as well. It stays until you close it or the day comes, so you'll still see it if you were away when it went up. And when the paper prints one of these turns of the year and you haven't looked yet, there's a dot on the menu button.