Going Medieval, the tried
Going Medieval
Going Medieval is the first game from Foxy Voxel, a developer made up of "some veterans of the industry", although the official site lacks any reference to the people behind this project born in 2018 and soon in the early access phase on Steam. Mattia Armani had already approached the title towards the end of last August: today we return to deal with it with the tried of a private beta version (the 0.5.8) still unripe, but with numerous new features (such as the addition of the seasons) and adjustments that did not prevent us from becoming familiar with the game mechanics that can be defined as a cross between city builder and survival.What happened in Great Britain in 1352?
For the official historiography no event of great importance; the game instead imagines that the black plague (actually eradicated a few years earlier) has wiped out almost all of the population, leaving a few survivors the honor of rebuilding the glorious United Kingdom from scratch. The key role of each individual settler (it is possible to control a maximum of ten) manifests itself from the initial stages, when it is necessary to select each of them "fishing" from a series of individuals procedurally generated by the CPU and characterized by the beauty of fourteen skills (including which construction, hunting, ingenuity, tailoring) and a couple of perks that distinguish its personality. The only editable aspect is the name; if the profile is not considered satisfactory, it is possible to re-roll the die an infinite number of times. The game begins with the minimum resources for a few days' sustenance: provisions, some wood, a bow for hunting. Natural elements must be exploited to guarantee survival, but how? Would it be better to immediately build a hut in which to shelter from the freezing winter temperatures or immediately set out on the hunt for game? Wouldn't it be more appropriate first to set up a table for slaughtering the captured deer? Certainly carcasses cannot last forever without being processed ...These are just the first of the numerous crossroads that Going Mediaval puts the player in front of, obviously without providing any answers. The first games are therefore a continuous groping to understand the functioning of the game mechanics. For example, you could be led to use the initial supplies as soon as the bar representing hunger goes to zero, when instead it will be discovered that the colonists can endure even a few hours of fasting, thus allowing the player to recover precious hours. After a few attempts it will become obvious that building a house in the middle of the woods is the smartest choice, because the timber is immediately available and no minutes are wasted commuting between the warehouse and the construction site.
Felling deer or trees?
Once you have taken steps with the basics of the survival economy, you can finally work out how to build a real village. The game engine will also have many limitations (it certainly does not aim to leave you speechless), but it has the advantage of leaving maximum freedom in the three dimensions; in addition, it must be given credit for being functional and serving the gameplay quite well. Not only the banal houses on several floors: in the management of Foxy Voxel (in the name of the software house you can guess the technique used for the graphics) you can create real castles with lots of underground passages, tunnels and so on and so forth. put, without having to be a RoomSketcher or Homestyler expert. It is worth noting that there are no "specific" buildings: both a bed and a workbench and a kitchen could be placed inside a house. It is therefore up to the player to study the most efficient location and structure possible to optimize the activities of their colony. At the beginning you can decide the purpose of the game: there is the possibility of eliminating the clashes, so as to concentrate only on the constructive part, but in the intentions of the developers there are also disturbing elements that can damage, up to razing , as painstakingly achieved by the player. Not only natural events, but also aggressive neighbors can jeopardize the settlement which must therefore be defended with dedicated structures and equipment for the population.Do you need a hand?
The user interface it is undoubtedly the aspect that needs the most finishing work, since the control over the individual units is very limited, so that even apparently trivial actions, such as equipping a bow, can require numerous mouse clicks. An artificial intelligence comes to the aid that seems to follow the logic of common sense: in the example above, the worker, having finished the reserves of wood for the construction of the walls, will start cutting down other trees to complete the work. However, these routines do not always succeed, requiring human intervention: an altogether simple, if frustrating, task when using a single settler, but far less comfortable when the village is made up of four or five units.To optimize production processes you can use a bar where work priorities are established; although it is a strategically important tool, it is not at all intuitive and its use is hastily liquidated by a tutorial page. In short, even from this point of view, the experience with Going Medieval is strongly marked by the so-called trial and error technique. To these "technical" variables is added a not negligible social aspect, which we had already mentioned above. Each unit, in fact, has its own physical and character alignments that modify its effectiveness. After a while the more religious will begin to be impatient for the lack of a place of worship or time to pray; others, on the other hand, suffer from cold temperatures and are less industrious in winter; some people could be put on the sidelines of the group due to their physical appearance or their shy nature.
Going Medieval takes its cue from elements of a rich vein that sees among its most illustrious exponents, the Sims, Black & White, Settlers, but also Stronghold, Rimworld, Minecraft. In the face of such a vast and varied ancestry, the task of attracting the attention of demanding PC customers will be anything but trivial (the title, even in size, seems to be aimed at mobile users). The foundations are solid, but a lot of work remains to be done on the user interface and even the graphics part deserves an upgrade before the final version is released.
