County of Fortune will let you keep the county you built in October

Start with the month you built it

October’s demo arrived on the 15th. If that’s where you laid out the roads and founded the settlements you want to keep, that county is the one covered by the developer’s carryover promise. There’s no launch-day purchase deadline attached to it. You can decide whether you like the work of running the county before paying to keep building.

If the last time you played was during June’s festival, there’s a break in that chain. The October FAQ specifically addresses trying to resume a Next Fest county in the newer demo. It gives no separate procedure for importing a June save straight into Early Access. If that old county is the reason you’re considering buying, check for a newer compatibility note first.

What lies beyond the second settlement level

The October demo gives you one map. Settlements can reach level two, where the Commoner class is available. That’s a useful stopping point if you want to try the premise: different settlements supply different goods, and the roads between their markets give vendors a way to move them. The county starts to matter well before any one settlement gets large.

Early Access extends settlement progression to level four and brings Artisans and Patricians into the economy. The demo already has raft ports. Early Access adds ports for sailboats, which the developer says can carry goods upstream as well as downstream. For a county already arranged around the river, that opens a new transport option on familiar ground.

Deciding whether to continue

If the satisfying part of the demo was getting one settlement to supply another, the case for continuing is concrete: more kinds of residents to serve and another way to get goods to them. If you’re still working out whether you enjoy that loop, the October save policy leaves room to wait. Keep the demo version and the date together in mind whenever you see a promise that “progress carries over.”