Saves, devices and sharing: keeping your city safe

What gets saved when

On your device Tildown saves every 5 seconds, so there is no save button. A new version goes to the cloud every 5 minutes if anything has changed, 30 seconds after your latest building step (at most every 2 minutes) and when you leave the tab or app after building.

The menu (☰) shows whether that works: under “☁️ Cloud save” it says “Backed up to the cloud” with the time. The ☰ button also carries a small dot, green when saved, yellow when something is wrong and grey without a connection to the cloud.

Without an account: your city code

Without an account your city gets a city code on the first start, a long string of letters, digits and hyphens. It is the name and the key of your cloud copy at once. In the menu you find it under “Your city code”, with the “Copy city code” button next to it. Keep it somewhere safe and never show it to anyone, not even in a screenshot of the menu: whoever knows it can load your city and overwrite it by building on.

Your browser remembers the code in two places. Safari, however, deletes such website data if you don’t open the site for seven days. Your city is still in the cloud then, but the device no longer knows under which code; only the code you wrote down brings it back. The cloud deletes a guest city 24 months after its last save. If it is still in your browser by then and you keep playing, the game uploads it again.

On a second device, enter the code under “Load a city from another device” and tap “Load”. After the prompt “Load cloud city?” the loaded city replaces the one on that device, and from then on the device plays under the new code. If you want to keep the old one, write down its code first.

With an account: name, password, recovery code

You create an account in the menu via “Sign in”: a username of 3 to 20 characters (unaccented letters, digits, _ and -), a password of at least 8 characters, then “Create account”. Tildown doesn’t ask for an email address. New players get the offer once on its own after about five minutes, on the card “Keep playing on all your devices?”.

Your guest city moves into the account. It is then tied to the account and kept in the cloud for as long as the account exists, and on every other device signing in is all it takes. If a guest city with buildings is already there, the game asks “Load your account’s city?”: “Load account city” fetches the city from the account, “Keep” carries on with the guest city and overwrites the account’s save. The city you don’t pick ends up under “Load other version”. You stay signed in for 30 days, and every game start extends that.

Right after creating the account, “🔑 Your recovery code” appears: 20 characters in groups of four. It is shown exactly once; copy it to where you keep your passwords before you tap “I have saved it”. Lost it? “🔑 Generate a new recovery code” in the menu creates a new one, and the old one stops working.

If you forget your password, tap “Forgot your password?” in the sign-in window, enter your username, the code and a new password and confirm with “Set password”. You are signed in right away, all other devices are signed out, and the code stays valid. Without it there is no way back in, because Tildown knows no email address.

Two devices, two windows

If you play the same city on your phone and your computer, the save with your latest building step counts: roads, zones, demolition, buying land, tracks, landmarks. Looking around and settings don’t count, and neither does the city growing by itself.

The game checks at start, when you return to the tab or app and on your first input after two minutes of rest. If the cloud holds a newer save, the game loads it without asking. If you had built something on this device that never got uploaded, it ends up under “Load other version”, flagged with a 🛟. Only if there is no storage left for that does the game ask “☁️ Newer save from another device”: “Load newer” costs you the save on this device, “Keep this one” makes it the current one.

Two open tabs or windows on the same device never save at the same time. One of them reports “This city is open in another window and was saved there most recently” and saves nothing until you reload it. If a window that has since been closed saved later, the game asks “🪟 Newer save from another window”; the version you don’t pick is set aside. If you sign in or out in one window, the other shows “🔄 Changed in another window” and reloads.

Playing offline

Without a connection you keep playing, the device keeps saving, and the menu tells you so. As soon as the browser reports the connection is back, Tildown uploads what you built in the meantime; a pending check is also retried every minute.

If the cloud didn’t answer at start, Tildown decides nothing on a hunch and compares once it is back. For the same city, the latest building step wins. If two different built cities face each other, say because the browser deleted your city and you started over offline, the game asks “☁️ Different save in the cloud” and names the number of buildings there. Whether you pick “Load cloud save” or “Keep this one”, the other version is set aside. What you earn while the game is closed is covered in The right start.

Starting over, backup and set-aside versions

“Reset city” sits in the menu under “⚠️ Danger zone”. After the prompt you start with a fresh river city on a new map; it replaces the old city in the cloud too. If the old city has buildings, Tildown saves it first; if that backup can’t be made because storage is full, the game doesn’t reset at all.

You get back with “Restore previous city”. The button only appears when a backup exists, and it swaps the two: the city you are playing becomes the backup itself, so you can switch back and forth.

The set-aside place is “Load other version”. It holds whatever lost out in a comparison: the save from the other window, from the other device, or the guest city when you signed in. A second slot is called “Load older set-aside version”, and loading swaps here too.

Backup and set-aside versions live only on this device, not in the cloud. With an account they belong to the account: when you sign out, Tildown parks them and hands them back on your next sign-in on this device. Whoever plays on the same tablet after you doesn’t see them.

Sharing: postcard and map code

The 📮 button at the top right next to ☰ turns your city into a postcard: a fresh picture with the current season, weather and time of day, your city’s name or “My city in Tildown”, plus Residents, Jobs, Balance and Buildings, the map code, a golden seal from the first prestige rank and tildown.com. The formats are “Wide” (1200 × 800 pixels), “Square” (1080 × 1080) and “Tall” (1080 × 1920) for stories.

“Share” only appears if your browser can pass images on directly, usually on phones; “Save image” stores the file tildown.png, “Copy link” copies the address tildown.com. No link leads to your city, and Tildown never prints the city code on the card.

The map code only describes the landscape: with the same code, rivers, hills and shores sit in the same places. In the menu it is under “🔗 Map code”, in groups of four with a check digit against typos. If you get one, paste it there into “Paste map code …” and tap “Load map”: you found a new city on exactly that map. Your current one is replaced, in the cloud too, but saved first just like when you reset.

Signing out, deleting your account, language

When you “Sign out”, Tildown uploads your city one last time; the device then carries on as a guest with a fresh city and a new city code. “Delete account” in the danger zone needs a connection. After “Delete for good”, your account, password and recovery code are gone, as are your city in the cloud with its backup copies there and the sign-ins on all other devices. A device that still has the city open won’t upload it again, and you carry on as a guest with a fresh city.

Without an account Tildown picks the language itself: the one of the web page you start from, otherwise your browser’s. With an account the menu has “🌐 Language”; your choice is stored with the account and follows you to every device you sign in on. The short version is in the guide.