How to play Iron Gall

This guide covers what you need to get started. The game teaches the rest along the way: the “Handbook” button in the top bar keeps everything it has shown.

The goal

Master Jacquemart has left, leaving you his writing workshop and a debt of 250 million florins to Tobie Lenz, the moneylender. You write pages, sell them, bring the workshop back to life, and pay the debt back at the counter, whenever you like and as much as you like.

Writing a page: the nonogram

Every page is a nonogram: a grid whose picture you work out from the numbers in the margins.

The numbers of a row (or a column) are the lengths of its blocks of filled squares, in order.
There is always at least one empty square between two blocks.
Left click: fill a square. Right click: put a cross, a note that means “surely empty”. Drag to do several at once.
Every grid has a single solution, and can be solved by logic alone, without guessing.

New to nonograms? The master’s books on the writing desk (“The master’s lessons”) open a tutorial that shows every technique on a real grid.

Ink

On magic pages (level 1 and up), every filled square costs ink. Crosses are in leadpoint: they are free.
A mistake becomes a blot: the square’s ink is lost, the combo breaks, and the page will sell for less. You never lose the grid.
An ink too weak for the page’s level does not hold: its squares fade and disappear. A left click traces over a square that has started to fade.
Better inks are bought at the counter from five suppliers, and brewed later in the ink works.

Selling and moving on

A finished page sells for florins: every right square, multiplied by the combo, and every finished line add to its value, with a bonus when the page has no mistake. A page you linger on loses value.
Pick the size and level of the next page to the right of the grid: bigger and higher pages pay more and need a better ink.
Customers’ orders, at the counter, bring extra rewards.
The master’s notebooks, in his study, are a tree of crafts: buy upgrades and powers there, such as the Magnifier, which finds the next square, or the Eraser, which erases a blot.

The workshop

The rooms the master shut reopen as soon as they have a use: the ink works (“Factory” in the bottom bar), to brew your own ink; the copyists’ room, to hire staff; the quay, to send explorers out; the library, for your grimoires of spells; the cabinet, for chests and relics. A star on a place in the bottom bar means something is waiting for you there.

When the game is closed, nothing moves: no drying, no ink works, no orders, no debt. The workshop waits for you.

The debt and the modes

The mode is chosen at the start of each game:

normal: the debt, its interest every month of play, and debtors’ prison after 25 hours of play if it is not paid back;
easy: the debt and its interest, with no deadline and no prison;
very easy: the debt alone, with no interest;
sandbox: no debt at all.

Useful keys

Esc: the settings (language, volumes, fullscreen, cats, tutorial).
P: pause. M: mute.
T: the master’s notebooks.
F12: a screenshot, saved in the save folder.