Bear in mind the crappy little beginning city in Diablo 2? It is an encampment (opens in new tab), technically: Just a few tents and wagons with a wall to maintain out skeletons. Now think about that as an alternative of a hero passing by way of on their approach to struggle the satan, you are the mayor of that terrible place. That is the state of affairs in upcoming technique recreation Gord (opens in new tab), kind of.
Managing a Slavic folklore-inspired darkish fantasy city would not look easy or simple, thoughts you. From the look of the brand new Gord gameplay video embedded above, it is as thankless a job as operating an ice age metropolis in Frostpunk, and there is a lot to it: useful resource gathering, city design, citizen administration, and on prime of all that, a little bit of RPG adventuring and fight.
We principally see the adventuring a part of Gord within the new 16-minute gameplay video, during which Stan Simply, a former Witcher 3 producer who’s now CEO of Gord developer Covenant, walks us by way of a primary quest. His city’s topics are mad about poisoned eggs within the swamp, which prompts him to take a celebration into the muck to kill “foulspawn.”
The generic-feeling quest is a little bit of a letdown, however maybe the attention-grabbing a part of Gord just isn’t the monsters however the folks. Your topics have strengths (“preventing aptitude,” “furiosity”) and weaknesses (“exploring incapability,” “boiling blood”), in addition to various expertise in duties akin to mining, preventing, and meals preparation. They are often gathered into events, organized in tactical formation, and clicked out into the wilds past the city to search out treasure and struggle monsters. Apart from bodily harm and demise, your topics can expertise psychological harm on account of all of the darkish fantasy violence they must put up with, particularly when a relative is concerned in no matter gooey beast encounter precipitated the trauma. Conserving your townsfolk each alive and no less than considerably rational may very well be difficult.
The pausable realtime fight, then again, is “very easy,” Simply says. Characters assault robotically, and at all times use the perfect of their two assaults for the scenario. Your fundamental job, it seems like, is to find out one of the best ways to place your topics, though you do have direct management over spellcasting.
There are 18 spells in Gord, they usually are available in utility, assist, and offensive flavors. Help spells embrace “Focus,” “Haste,” “Rejuvenate,” whereas Offensive spells embrace “Sap,” “Entangle,” “Infest,” and different insect and disease-themed incantations—it is familiar-looking fantasy RPG stuff.
Gord will embrace a marketing campaign with “hand-crafted” maps that inform a narrative, in addition to a customized state of affairs mode, the place the world’s dimension and useful resource richness are customizable. The brand new video would not spend a lot time in town constructing side of Gord, and I am considerably extra curious about that than the adventuring—perhaps it’s going to be the topic of the following commentary video.
Covenant plans to launch Gord subsequent 12 months. Again when Gord was introduced, the studio additionally stated that it has one other challenge within the works, however we’ve not heard extra about it. (It is referred to as “Challenge Perun,” based on the studio’s web site.)
