Combolands How To Play — First Run, Milestones and Combos

Combolands: Roguelike Citybuilder is a single-player roguelike citybuilder and deckbuilder from Crux Games, and it launched on Windows PC via Steam on August 24, 2026 for $7.99. A run is built to last about 30 minutes: you place building cards onto a procedurally generated island, trigger score cascades, and reach each population milestone before the week counter runs out. You choose two of seven guilds before you start, and the official store describes 21 possible guild combinations, so this Combolands how to play guide focuses on the loop that stays the same across all of them.

What Combolands Is and How a Run Starts

Every run opens with a guild select screen and a fresh procedural map. The official Steam page describes the game as a "tiny roguelike citybuilder" where buildings act like cards, and it lists the advertised scale: 120+ buildings, 100+ passive heirlooms, 13+ city councillors and 10 increasingly challenging ranks. You begin with the two starting guilds unlocked and unlock the rest as you play. The separate free demo that existed before launch is no longer offered on the store page, so new players now start directly in the full game.

At the start of a run you are offered a small hand of building cards, with sources describing three choices at a time, and you place one onto the board. Adjacency and range decide whether a placement triggers a neighbour, which is why two players can play the same card in different spots and get very different scores.

The Core Loop: Place a Building, Score, Hit the Milestone

The loop is simple to state and hard to optimise: place buildings to raise your score, cross the milestone target, then spend the gold you earned before the next milestone begins. Completing a milestone early ends the week immediately and pays a small gold bonus, which is worth taking when you do not need the leftover weeks to set up a scaling engine.

Run element	What it does
Milestone target	The score you must reach to advance; targets rise as the run continues
Week counter	A limited number of weeks per milestone; ending early banks an extra gold bonus
Guild pick	Two of seven guilds define which building cards can appear
Gold	Earned from completed milestones; spent in the shop or on rerolls

Weekly hazards appear as difficulty rises, so a run is not purely a points puzzle. Community reports also note that a single building can trigger only a limited number of times per week, which makes trigger frequency a real constraint when you plan a long chain (to confirm).

Guilds, Heirlooms, Potions and the Shop

Between milestones you may visit the shop, and skipping it is a legitimate choice because the game rewards passing. The shop stock is random, so the value of a visit depends on whether an offer fits the run you already have.

Shop category	What it changes
Heirloom	A passive run modifier; the store advertises more than 100
Potion	Temporary map and tile manipulation, often to hit a target score
Blueprint	A copy of a target building, useful for repeating a key card
Building upgrade	Alters how a placed building behaves for the rest of the run

• Heirlooms are passive modifiers; the store advertises 100+, and the wiki notes that only a few specific interactions are publicly confirmed so far (to confirm).
• Potions let you repaint or otherwise change tiles, usually for a temporary bonus.
• Blueprints and upgrades change how an existing building behaves rather than adding a new one.
• Rerolls let you shop again for a better offer when your gold allows it.

Councillors, Ranks and the Road to Better Runs

Beyond the shop, you recruit councillors through milestone requests and climb ten ranks, and the game ships with 21 Steam achievements. Exact rank names, rewards and unlock thresholds are not set out in a clean official list, so treat specific rank tables from third parties as to confirm. The reliable beginner habits are to build around one strong scoring pair instead of many weak ones, to keep gold for the offers that unlock more tools, and to end a milestone early only when the bonus is worth more than the setup time you give up.

• Start with placements that trigger every few weeks rather than one-time effects.
• Watch range: a Town Bell or similar range effect can bring a whole cluster into one chain.
• Read the Compendium added in update v1.0.5 for building and heirloom details while a run is live.
• Compare your results across the 21 guild pairings before repeating the same build.