Funny how urgency can change everything. What automatically comes to mind if I tell you that they have called me on the phone differs a lot from what you will think after telling you that they have called me for an emergency. Urgency is what separates Siege Survival: Gloria Victis from any other management or strategy game.
In Siege Survival our mission is not to survive, but to do it urgently, so to the well thought out mechanics of resource management, city building and Commandos-style stealth, we also have to add a cycle of day and night that changes everything.
The last line of defense
What could easily happen without pain or glory in front of our noses – another strategy game more set in the Middle Ages – proves to have a fantastic collection of ideas that are worth landing with the same calm as attention.
Here, unlike many others, our mission is not to shape a belligerent city waiting to devastate neighboring towns. We are that neighboring town trying to withstand the attack of a much more powerful enemy.
With the few remaining soldiers guarding the last bastion, our role is to take care of the last refugees hiding there to support the defense of the city. That is to say, we are not the ones who attack, but the ones who prepare bandages, repair weapons and get food, even setting traps for rats.
During the day, our characters must run from here to there cutting firewood, preparing food and shaping new constructions that open up more possibilities for us both within the bastion, with the survival of our characters, and outside it, with that of the soldiers who are the last line of protection.
What begins with the characters collecting eggs from our chickens and building makeshift beds, ends with orchards, water accumulators and even armories in which to shape the axes that guarantee our victory.
Much to do and very little time
The key is that how much there is to do must be done in a short period of time. If we do not eat or drink today, our performance when building or making objects will be slowed down. If we cannot send food to the soldiers abroad, soon our struggle to survive within the walls will have been for nothing.
In that dichotomy between expanding and surviving versus taking care of the defense of the city is the key to Siege Survival . And in the harshness of an approach that does not go around with little girls and does not give in to any facility, is where its devilish hitch resides.
In fact, the idea of the game could simply stay there – with that courtyard with green areas protected by the walls and other areas that, day after day, allow your progress to be slowed or your buildings destroyed because they are within reach of the arches and arches. enemy catapults-, and that would already be something to take into account .
However, there is one more twist. Despite the fact that part of the materials you can end up getting based on building, being the rat traps or the water accumulator two of the best examples, the materials do not grow inside the walls. It is time to take advantage of the darkness of the night to go out of them in search of objects.
From management to strategy, and from there to stealth and exploration
As if it were a Commandos , although with limited visibility and few survival options, those who are not resting or looking for information from the enemies, will be able to leave the shelter to search for objects, manufacturing materials and even survivors among what remains of the city looted.
A huge map that you go through little by little, night after night, looking for wood to cut or something to put in your mouth. Over time, you’ll jump from the basics to key objects that allow you to open doors to meet other characters or unlock debris so you can navigate shortcuts.
Opting for stealth so as not to fall in seconds in front of the patrolling soldiers, escaping from them is easy in the middle of the night, but it starts to get complicated as the sun advances and the patrols become more numerous.
Once again, that urgency that we mentioned. Haste that invites us to rummage through the filth for any object that will help us to create the next day a shovel with which to open a path or a torch with which to burn the bodies that prevent us from accessing a key.
With many limited building options and a large part of that city still closed, the desire to continue with Siege Survival and see how far it is able to continue to amaze me is enormous. I hope this aspiring gem continues to give us good joys when it comes to Steam this year.
