Gord Preview: A Dark and Unforgiving Survival Game from Former Witcher Devs

ign.com:

If there’s one thing Gord makes clear right from the get-go, it’s that surviving its dark and dangerous woods will not be an easy or comfortable experience. In my time playing this settlement-building survival game, I raised a village from nothing, fought off barbaric invaders, and made a dark pact with an evil God – all of which were equal parts stressful and rewarding. Covenant, an indie studio founded by a handful of former CD Projekt Red developers, clearly borrows a lot from the Slavic dark fantasy setting of their Witcher roots. But instead of playing an all-powerful warrior who makes his living slaying dangerous monsters, Gord asks you to manage a group of peasants fighting to survive against impossible odds, and that managed to capture my attention in the first few levels and couple hours I spent with it.

If you don’t know what a “gord” is, the word refers to Slavic fortified settlements from medieval times – a fitting name for a game that’s all about building your own walled villages to survive the setting’s hostile environments. At first look, Gord looks and feels like an extremely depressing version of The Sims, with me spending most of my time concerning myself with the well-being of a group of villagers who seemed all too eager to become injured, go insane, and starve to death without my micromanagement. Building structures like a lumber mill for storing wood to be used in construction or a forager’s hut for storing food were essential to keeping my settlement happy and operational, but I also had to worry about the group’s mental health as venturing out into the extremely dangerous and perpetually dark woods takes a massive toll unless they’re properly equipped with torchlight and traveling in pairs.

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