A small Nordic river town at dawn: a stone bridge, a clock tower, terraces with lit shop windows, boats at a quay, and wooded hills in mist

Life simulation · macOS

Quoxen A town of Sonderfolk.

Start a town of 25–300 Sonderfolk and watch their lives unfold. You govern, observe, and occasionally meddle; the town remembers.

Coming soon to the Mac App Store How it plays

25–300 Sonderfolk to begin with Your town choose how it begins Local the town lives on your Mac Apple Silicon macOS 14 or later

A day in the town

It starts before you do.

06:10

Lights along Elm Row

Mira is at the bakery already. The bus driver is not yet at the bus. Someone's cat is on the quay, watching the ducks and nothing else.

12:15

A queue at the plaza stall

The counter is two people short of the rush. Whoever is at the back will not get lunch in time, and will remember that they didn't.

19:30

Dinner in the townhouses

Lamps come on. The journal notes a storm crossing the river district and who was caught in it. Diego is home late and has not said why.

Screens

The town, as it looks.

Morning on the main street: the shop row with its striped awnings, commuters on the pavement, a bus stop and houses on the hills behind

A Sonderfolk at a café table on the plaza with her inspection card open: name, age, mood, what she is doing now, and her needs bars

Looking inside a townhouse at dinner time: the ground floor opened up with sofa, piano, stairs and a resident at the kitchen table

The town journal at dusk over a lit shopping street: a feed of headlines with filters and a pinned story about a park festival

The quay at five in the afternoon: two fishing boats and a rowboat moored, anglers on the jetty, a duck, and the town behind

How it plays

Observe the town. Get to know its people. Occasionally meddle.

Lives, not loops

Every Sonderfolk has needs, daily routines, a household, a memory of what happened to them and an opinion of the neighbours. A schedule is what they intend. The day is what happens.

Look closer

Click anyone. Their needs, schedule, memories and relationships open beside the world, and the camera can follow them home.

Look inside

Homes open floor by floor. Someone is cooking, someone is washing up, someone has been at the piano for a while.

The town journal

What happened, in headlines. Filter the entries, pin the ones you want to keep, and jump to events with a recorded location.

Ordinances and events

A curfew, work from home, free transit, a park festival. A storm, a blackout, a fad. The town answers within the day, and not always the way you meant.

Weather and the clock

Four weathers cross the streets, lamps come on at dusk, buses keep their routes and boats go out from the quay. Pause, or run the day at up to sixteen times.

Choose how it begins

Choose your population, town dimensions, building counts and street density. Keep the food economy on for local production and deliveries, or turn it off. Then let the town begin.

Runs on your Mac

No telemetry. The town is generated and simulated locally, and the saves stay with you. Built-in dialogue works offline; optional AI-written dialogue and spoken voices each need a Quoxen account and an internet connection.

Questions

Things people ask.

What is a Sonderfolk?

The people of the town. The word comes from sonder: the realisation that each passer-by has an inner life as vivid as your own. Every Sonderfolk has needs, daily routines, a household, a memory of what happened to them, and opinions about the neighbours. The same word is singular and plural.

Which Macs does Quoxen run on?

Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later, with a mouse or trackpad and a keyboard. Intel Macs are not supported. Graphics presets from Low to Ultra let older machines trade detail for frame rate.

Does it need an account or an internet connection?

Not for ordinary play. The town is generated and simulated on your Mac, saves stay on your Mac, and built-in dialogue works offline. Optional AI-written dialogue and spoken voices each need a Quoxen account and an internet connection. If AI dialogue is unavailable, conversations use built-in lines. The privacy page explains what the online features send and to whom.

Is Quoxen a city builder?

No. You choose the setup before starting, and the game generates the town. Once it begins, you watch it, look closely at the people in it, and occasionally give it something to talk about: a curfew, a park festival, a storm. There is no zoning, no town budget to balance and no win condition.

Can I save a town and come back to it?

Yes. Named saves and a quick save on F5 (F9 to load) preserve your town, its people and their progress. Load a save to carry on from that moment. During development, updates that change the save format require a new town; existing saves can still be opened in the version that created them.