Crux Games · Full release (v1.0)
Combolands Guide & Compendium
Combolands guide and reference: all 7 guilds plus the 2 secret ones, the 21 guild combos, heirlooms, potions, the 10 difficulty ranks and every achievement.
Official Trailer Patch Ledger
What changed in Combolands
- SITE Compendium opens with 45 named buildings, all 9 guilds, all 21 achievements and all 10 rank clear rates read from Steam's public stats.
- Crux Games posts its roadmap: localisation first, Steam Deck verification second, no dates on either, and the two-person studio drops back to part-time.
- MAJOR v1.0.6 — gems and tomes now reach the Jewellery Box and Bookshelf, blueprints stack, final gold score counts heirloom sell values, and the first Council Request refresh is free.
- MAJOR v1.0.5 adds the in-game Compendium, which the developers call by far the most requested feature in the game.
- MINOR v1.0.4 fixes the Politician's guild re-select, makes Sawmill trigger Manufacturer again, and stops plateaus being built on plateaus.
What is Combolands?
Combolands is a roguelike citybuilder by Crux Games — a two-person studio whose designer, Sam Alfred, previously designed Terra Nil. It released on 2026-08-24 for PC (Windows, Steam) at $9.99 USD, and by August 30 it held a 97.5% positive Steam score across 646 reviews. Each run gives you a procedurally generated island, two of the seven guilds, and a score target to beat before the weeks run out — around 30 minutes end to end.
Underneath that are 120+ buildings, 100+ passive heirlooms, 13+ councillors, 21 guild pairings and 10 difficulty ranks. Almost none of it is explained in game — v1.0.5 added an in-game Compendium precisely because players kept asking. This site is the version you can read outside the game, with every number attributed on the sources page: what each guild actually scores off, how the two secret guilds unlock, what terrain and paints do, and how far players get — 53.9% of owners have cleared the first rank, 5.4% the last, and 0.2% hold every achievement's rarest entry.
Combolands Screenshots
First Island
Five steps to your first win
- Learn the targeting colours. Light blue means adjacent, orange means range — most early losses are placement mistakes, not bad draws. Beginner guide →
- Pick a pairing you can steer. You start with a limited set and unlock the rest as you play. All 21 combinations →
- Work out which buildings need triggering. Cards that say "when triggered" need something else to fire them, and that is the wall between the easy ranks and the rest. Scoring and triggers →
- Get the Merchant working. Buying a vote for 3 gold to get 5 back is the cheapest engine in the game. Gold and the shop →
- Unlock Rogues, then Arcane. 75 gold in one milestone opens the first; 8 gems in a Jewellery Box opens the second. Secret guild unlocks →
The Compendium
Reference tables and rankings
Guild Tier List
All 9 guilds ranked, with global win rates from Steam achievement data.
TABLE21 Guild Combos
Every two-guild pairing, what it wants and how hard it is to steer.
UNLOCKSecret Guilds
Exact steps to unlock Rogues and Arcane.
DATARank Clear Rates
All 10 difficulty ranks with the share of players who have beaten each.
DATAAchievements
All 21 achievements with unlock conditions and global rarity.
MECHANICScoring & Triggers
Base score, mult, xmult and what "when triggered" actually means.
Every Page
Full Combolands index
Guilds
- All 9 guilds — scoring loop, named buildings and Steam win rate for each
- The 21 combinations — every pickable pairing and what it is built around
- Guild tier list — the launch-week community vote, tallied
- Rogues & Arcane — the two secret guilds and their unlock chains
Reference tables
- Buildings — every building named in a source, with the source
- Heirlooms — how they work and the Jewellery Box chain
- Councillors — requests, votes and refresh costs
- Potions & paints — Ghost Paint, rainbow paint and the rest
- Achievements — all 21 with global rarity
- Ranks — all 10 with clear rates
Mechanics
- Scoring & triggers — "when triggered", adjacent vs range, mult vs xmult
- Walls & terrain — enclosure, plateaus, railways and tile types
- Gold — every documented source and cost
- Endless mode — Megalopolis milestones and the known break
Before you buy
- Is it worth it? — the Steam numbers and the real complaints
- Mobile, Mac, Xbox? — every platform status
- Steam Deck — playable, not Verified, and why
- The demo — what happened to it
- Games like Combolands — how far the Balatro comparison goes
- System requirements
Guides
- Combolands Beginner Guide: Your First Island — How Combolands actually works on your first run: picking two guilds, reading targeting lines, and why the biggest number is not always the right placement.
- Combolands Tips: 10 Things Worth Knowing Early — Ten Combolands tips from patch notes, community guides and the launch-week discussion board: placement, triggers, gold, removals and when to end a milestone.
- Combolands Milestones: Targets, Weeks & When to Bank — How Combolands milestones work — score targets, the week clock, extension time, and the decision about whether to end a milestone early or keep building.
- Combolands Unlocks: Guilds, Neutral Levels & Endless — How Combolands progression works between runs: guild XP, neutral levels, when new guilds appear, and the unlocks gating early milestone exits and endless mode.
Keeping it honest
- Patch ledger — every patch note and the developer roadmap
- Sources — where every number on this site came from
- About — what this site does and does not claim
FAQ
Is it Combolands or Comboland?
The game is Combolands, plural, and its full Steam title is Combolands: Roguelike Citybuilder. Both "comboland" and the spaced "combo lands" are common enough misspellings that Google tracks them as separate searches, and Google Trends lists "comboland" as a breakout query alongside the correct spelling. They all lead to the same game — Steam app 4075620 by Crux Games.
What is Combolands?
A single-player roguelike citybuilder by the two-person South African studio Crux Games. You pick 2 of 7 guilds, get a procedurally generated island, and place buildings that trigger each other in cascades to hit a score target before the weeks run out. Runs are designed to last about 30 minutes. It released in full on 2026-08-24 at $9.99.
Is Combolands the Balatro city builder?
It is the game people mean by that. Polygon's preview headline was "Cities: Skylines meets Balatro", and Google Trends lists Balatro as a breakout related topic for Combolands. The comparison is about structure — cards that are buildings, a board that is your deck, and multiplier chains that snowball — not about a shared studio or publisher.
About This Site
Combolands Compendium is an independent, unofficial fan resource for Combolands players — not affiliated with Crux Games.
- How we verify: Numbers on this site come from sources you can open yourself: the Steam store page, the developers’ own patch notes and announcements, and Steam’s public global achievement stats. Every table names its source, and anything we could not confirm is written as unconfirmed rather than guessed.
- Update cadence: Crux Games shipped v1.0.3 through v1.0.6 in the first five days, so the patch ledger is re-read against the Steam announcement feed and the achievement percentages are re-pulled whenever a patch lands — the date stamped on each table is the day it was last checked, not the day the page was built.
- What we don't do: We do not invent building stats, heirloom effects or drop rates to fill out a table. Combolands has no promo codes, so there is no codes page here, and we link no crack, key-reseller or repack sites even though those queries are the loudest ones around this game.