GOING MEDIEVAL

A new challenger reaches for the colony-builder crown

- Dominic Tarason

Most of your villagers will get involved on harvest day.

The gritty, simulationist colony-builder (once the domain of the hyper-technical Dwarf Fortress) is now a highly contested bit of videogame real-estate. For five years, Going Medieval from Serbian indie studio Foxy Voxel has been laying Early Access groundwork. We talked to the team to find out what's in store for v1.0.

Going Medieval makes little effort to hide its inspirations. Despite shifting away from abstract 2D art and into semi-realistic polygons, this is unmistakably a game hewn from the same stone as Rimworld. As such, it's a pausable real-time simulation strategy game in which you manage a handful of medieval peasants, and direct them in creating a self-sustaining home in the wilderness, adopting passing strangers to grow your community while driving away raiders and others.

This is definitely a slower, less chaotic experience than directing a colony in Rimworld, though. Unless time acceleration is set on full, days are long and story events are sparsely delivered on all but the higher difficulty settings. And for me that's just fine, because it lets me focus on the building.

While still limited to a chunky Rimworld/Dwarf Fortress-like grid, it is surprisingly quick and easy to build large and complex structures in Going Medieval. Given enough materials and some time, a multi-floor fort with archery balconies is one of the simpler things you can do. Creativity has never been my forte, though I've seen some players assemble some spectacular towers, bifurcated castles bridging valleys and rivers or subterranean strongholds.