I do love a good colony-building simulator but upon first inspection, Gord seemed to offer more than just colony-building. It throws in a bit of roleplaying and a dash of real-time strategy to blend the three genres into one. I remember seeing trailers for this before its release and was super hyped due to its dark, gritty setting and creepy creatures. Gord’s fantasy setting was one that I was ready to jump into and see what Team 17 had to offer.
I managed to get a hold of a Steam (PC) copy of the game and a very quick download I was ready to jump into the monster-infested landscapes to see how well my colony can thrive and unravel the story behind Gord.
Lead the people of the Tribe of Dawn as they venture deep into forbidden lands. You’ll need to complete quests that will shape the personalities, well-being, and fate of your community. You must ensure the survival of your Tribe in this grim fantasy world inspired by Slavic folklore.
Gord is a single-player adventure strategy that sees the player doing everything possible to build and expand the Tribe of Dawn. To survive you must build your settlement and conquer what lies beyond your gates. In Gord, you must complete quests while managing your tribe whose stories and well-being will determine your fate.
With Gord, I feel like it tries to do three different genres fairly simply and not fleshed out rather than giving us a solid all-in-one game if that makes sense. Sure, it has city-building elements with a lot of micromanagement features that have you upgrading your Gord, making sure your Tribe is happy and not too insane, and the management of resources but compared to other management sims like Stranded: Alien Dawn, Gord is fairly basic.
The RTS side of it is basic, with the recruiting of archers, spearmen, and axemen whom you send out to fight and keep your gord safe. The survival element is nice but mainly comes down to making sure that your tribe doesn’t lose its sanity and start turning on one another.
You start by making a simple circle wall which is classed as your starting area and within this, you will start building new structures that will aid in the expansion of your Tribe. Harvesting resources plays a big part in your success as you’ll need food and materials to upgrade the gord and keep everyone feed.
The problem arises when the resources are located outside the safety of the Gord and while your tribe is out collecting these resources, they can slowly lose their sanity and become frenzied but if it isn’t your people turning on one another they will have the likes of wolves, bears, gators and strange creatures that will try and have them for dinner.
I found it hard at times to switch between managing what was going on inside the gord and outside. When new settles are born it seems to be done at random and you find yourself usually not having enough settlers to get all the jobs done, so I found myself having to spend a lot of time switching settlers between jobs to make sure everything was getting done but then on top of that making sure you are looking after your settlers that are out in the wilds fending off creatures and completing quests.
One of my favourite things about Gord is its boss-like creatures called Horrors. These show up from time to time and block your progress unless you can come to an understanding. You will be offered randomly generated moral events that will impact your tribe. Normally it comes down to sacrificing the last-born child or partaking in a challenging fight that feels way above your settler’s pay grade. However, they do look horrifying and you can see how much effort has gone into the world-building for this game.
Visually Gord is gory, dark, and not for the faint-hearted. When you first load up the game you are welcomed with a disclaimer about sensitive subjects but I didn’t think Team 17 would go into so much detail when you see children getting sacrificed. Think Mortal Kombat style fatalities, yeah, it’s that bad. However, it does keep with its gritty horror setting, I love the monster designs and think some of the characters are cool too.
One thing I will point out is that it is super dark all the time, like where has the sun gone. Apart from the snowy areas, it is so hard to navigate through thick forests and purely dull swamps due to the lack of visibility. Audio wise Team 17 has done a cracking job and you do get the bonus of mid-tier voice acting to add the suspense and horror to the game’s story and setting.
Gord’s story is enjoyable to play but once you have finished it, you’ll find yourself continuing the dark fantasy fun in the custom scenario mode. I found it a lot more enjoyable to customise my game settings to make it a little simpler to get a better understanding of the mechanics of the game, than changing it to make it more of a challenge by making resources more scarce and changing the different Biomes. My personal favourite is the woodlands one. Gord does enough to allow for hours of gameplay it just sadly feels like a good game rather than a great one.
Conclusion
If only the gameplay was as epic as the world-building and creatures that appear in Gord, we would have a fantastic gaming experience rather than a mid-range cluster of different genres trying to blend together. I would have liked to have seen more elements to the RTS side of it and a more fleshed-out gord building experience but when you get to see the horrifying cutscenes of people being ripped apart and have a decent story it doesn’t make Gord a bore to play.
If you are a fan of this type of game then I would suggest looking into it as it does have moments of wow and odd satisfaction but I wouldn’t go around recommending it to everyone due to some of the scenes and nature of the game, and for that reason, I’m giving Gord a 6 out of 10.
Grab Gord on Steam here https://store.steampowered.com/app/1351210/Gord/
For more reviews head here https://invisioncommunity.co.uk/category/review/
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