I never knew, and it seems a lot other people didn’t either because I haven’t heard about it from anywhere. I stumbled upon it while wandering around their website, clicking links. It’s on one of the sites selling the game.
From Tilted Mill, the people behind Children of the Nile. Despite developing some other games that were lacking, the spark was there, it merely needed a proper outlet.
I was first introduced to the game when Rock, Paper, Shotgun started posting about it. Several interesting previews, and post release coverage, got my attention. A typical hack-and-slash RPG with city building elements? Intriguing.
First up character creation. This is a good point in RPGs to see what you might be in-store for. There are a lot of classes to choose from. Ranging from the typical (brawler) to the more obscure (seneschal). I am a more defensive player, and I want to try out the city building element, so I settled for the Architect. Buildings cost less to build and upgrade, at the expense of fighting skills. Seems reasonable, and doesn’t sound as as bad as some of the other non-combat classes.
So here we are:
Now let’s get started.
Build up my city and tame the area.
From time to time, visitors arrive at your village. They have a wide variety of backgrounds and you can hire them by builiding them somewhere to live and work. But they are only visitors until you do so, and they will leave so that more can arrive. The bigger your village gets the more visitors you can accomodate at the same time, but you start off with only two.
Still trying to get a feel for the game, and having no idea what would be a good or bad decision I decide to plonk for Horatio.
He looks like some kind of dwarf, and dwarves are known for their building skills, after their beards and hate of miasma. He seems like the perfect candidate for my village building desires. When you invite someone to live in your village, you are taken to a bird’s eye view of the buildbable areas.
In the middle is your main building, this starts out as a small outpost and can be upgraded as your village grows. Indeed, some of the more prominent visitors wont settle in a village with a small central building.
Well, not much seems to be happening, and I don’t have enough money for any more construction, so I suppose I should go and search the surronding areas. After wandering around in the middle of nowhere, I soon come across a skeleton. He has been working hard in the fields to bring home money for his poor skeleton family, his pockets carrying the few measly coins he has managed to earn, then I come along to kill him, just who is meant to be the evil monster? I get soundly beaten however. Fortunately I survive and manage to get back to the village where you heal over time. The little mini-map in the bottom marks out enemies and buildings, and also has a little building symbol around the edge so you can always find your way back.
From time to time, evil creatures set out from their base to attack your village. A small band makes it way to your village, giving you a chance to head them off if you happen to be out in that direction. Not wanting to see my village destroyed I leap into action, and actually manage to see them off. The evil skeletons obviously just sit around watching television all day, so they’re not as strong as the hard working field skeleton.
Every so often the King sends a request to your village. The ones I experienced were all for food, but he may just have been especially hungry in my game. Completing a request gives you a nice bonus, fail however and it’s an even sharper fall. Unfortunately I haven’t been paying enough attention to our food stocks, and with only a craftsman and a trapper in my village we are barely breaking even.
More visitors arrive, this time one of them is a herder. I take a peek at the description, I can provide 3 food per day and if you upgrade me I can give you a pet dragon, sounds like she’ll be the solution to my food problems, I don’t quite have enough gold at the moment though, wait, did you say pet dragon? I’m off like a shot, monsters or no monsters I want a dragon.
The village has come under attack again, this is getting difficult for my tender architect hands to handle, I’ll look into get some of the villagefolk involved in the defence. When you click on a building you get the various stats of who lives there, and options for upgrading, ejecting them from the village etc. One of the options tells them what to do when the village is attacked, they can either stay out of the way or they can help you defend it. I decide to set Horatio to help defend, after all along with their beards, miasma hate and building skills, dwarves are known to be good fighters. Sadly, that didn’t seem to be the case with poor Horatio. We managed to defend the village but he didn’t survive. My villages first loss. Oh well, time to search his corpse, as you tend to do in RPGs. I find his remains, hovering my mouse over them tells me that if you have an undertaker you can properley honour his passing, I will do it, I shall hire an undertaker, for Horatio.
I carry on exploring, developing my fighting skills so I don’t have to keep heading back to town. The fighting system is pretty simple. Just click on a foe to attack them, then all the dice rolling is done in the background. It sometimes moves you when you meant to attack, so that means a missed opportunity for you, and an extra attack for the enemy. It didn’t seem to get better as I went along. Partly it’s down to my poor mouse skills, but something like this should be made easy for everyone.
Another group of visitors arrive, as usual I skip the formalities and check out what they can offer me. That’s when I meet my first guard, at first ‘I think I don’t really need a guard, I’m getting better at defending the village and could use the money bettter.’ But then I see his name, Larry. Larry the Guard. I have to hire him right away!
I don’t have enough Fame though, so back to work. Fame tracks your achivements in the game, and many visitors require you to have a certain amount before they will join you. The Kings requests can give you a nice boost, or a nasty fall, and generally killing enemies and clearing areas will up you rating.
Sadly I don’t get a chance to hire Larry, I didn’t get enough fame in time. A few minutes later I am greeted with the following message.
So the big question, will I buy it? Answer, one day. It’s a pretty good game, but a bit rough around the edges. The city building aspect is fun, but ultimately doesn’t make much of an impact. The village is just there to service your exploring requirements, giving you a place to rest while providing a focus for your activities. This would be fine if the hack-and-slash aspect was deeper, but it feels a bit shallow without much variety. I was slightly let down by Depths of Peril, another hack-and-slash game, which is probably why I am so wary. Overall the graphics are passable, and the mechanics work well, I could see myself getting several more hours enjoyment out of this. Reading the official forums seems to suggest it gets more interesting when you have upgraded several of your buildings, and the class choices look to offer lots of different paths to take.
Some miscalleneous screenshots
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