Gord is an intriguing knot of complex survival systems and Slavic lore

Three warriors return from an expedition that left with twice as many. They bathe to tend their wounds, they drink mead to calm their nerves, and they return to their families to rest until morning. Rejuvenated in body and spirit, they gather at the temple in the center of the Gor, where they are joined by two new archers and a scout. Facing the eternal darkness that plagues the land around them, they venture into the unknown – once more to the Breach.

God, originally advertised as a horror strategy game but later reworked into an adventure strategy title with survival and horror elements, is the systemically dense and highly intelligent debut project by the Polish studio Covenant. The team consists of veterans of many high-profile local outfits such as CD Projekt Red, 11-Bit Studios, Flying Wild Hog and others. It shows; Given what I saw at Gamescom 2022, there’s definitely plenty of scope God not just making an appearance on the scene, but beating your way through the competition and cementing yourself as something truly great.

The events of God take place in a world haunted by eternal darkness. Your job is to lead the Dawn Tribe south and unite the lands you encounter on behalf of a shady monarch. In this way, you’ll learn about your companions’ strengths, weaknesses, and personalities as you build your own Gor and within it, build a society that will grow as you upgrade its amenities, fortify its battlements, and encourage its residents to have families of their own from the start .

The interesting thing about all of the above is that each narrative element of God informed by a corresponding system and vice versa. For example, the fact that the world is in constant twilight is addressed by God‘s Visibility mechanic that works similar to something like this dark wood. The map will only give you a certain amount of information at a time, making it tempting and dangerous to venture further from camp. On the one hand you need resources – on the other hand you need people who actually use them.

Eventually, God‘s Systems connect to form a complex and interrelated web of interconnected mechanics. It’s way too complicated to preview, but to give you an idea of ​​how they work together it’s worth checking out how the game handles death and error states.

Image: Bund/Team17

As explained above, you’ll need to recruit warriors before exploring the area around your Gord – and since this is an adventure game with heavy survival and horror elements, these lands are naturally home to different types of enemies. There are monsters from Slavic folklore, beasts that can tear you to pieces, and fellow humans who have adapted to and been shaped by darkness. Expeditions are highly unlikely to go as smoothly as you’d probably like, meaning you’ll inevitably lose some people from time to time.

Suppose an archer is killed by a giant spider. This archer isn’t just an easily swappable unit, as might be the case in other games. When the archer goes down for the first time, you can revive him, although he will suffer from some kind of physical illness – maybe his movement speed has been reduced or he is now prone to heart attacks. Defeating him again will kill him, but it doesn’t end there.

Any companion that sees the Archer’s corpse will be immediately affected via their health bar, which will deplete after encountering a corpse. This happens to varying degrees: when they loot a corpse for resources on the field, they take a small, almost negligible hit. However, if it is one of their companions, the drop will be greater. And if they’re related to the person in question – each character can have parents, siblings, etc. – the damage to their health bar will be immense. You can bury corpses to prevent this, but it’s time-consuming.

Once a unit’s sanity is reduced to zero, they develop a mental affliction that reduces their ability to survive in combat. Maybe they forget their orders or leave the company. Anyway, the fascinating aspect of spiritual integration is that one person’s actions can then have a domino effect on the entire group, resulting in a situation where several people die, the collective sanity of the company begins to decline and you there suddenly are in great danger.

Image: Bund/Team17

It also goes on. Sanity can be restored in the Gord by visiting the Mead Hall, although this can also affect people who aren’t galloping outside in the dark. For example, imagine a godly axeman has begun to regret the lives he has taken outside of God. He can apply to be placed in church service so that he can repent of his sins. If you indulge him, his sanity can regenerate. But if you send him out to loot the corpses of his fallen comrades, he will give in to fear, anger, or other emotions that endanger the rest of his party. There’s a lot of micromanagement involved God this justifies its status as a strategy game in that you not only have to pay attention to what’s currently on the screen, but also what’s not.

This also applies to your god himself. You can’t just take everyone out to fight; Humans must stay in the settlement to keep the economy going, gather resources, and upgrade amenities like your temple, meadery, and bathhouse. Again, there are a lot of little things to consider here, but I think you’ve got the gist of it – and all we’ve done is to briefly summarize some of the mechanics that are affected by the death of a single unit.

There are combats that span different areas and take into account different environmental conditions while acknowledging unique synergies between units. There’s a whole spell system that gives you access to incantations, all of which are preceded by a pre-Slavic language implemented into the game with the help of a Polish professor. There are enemies that can infiltrate your palisade while you’re away, enemies with unique traits like neurotoxins that trigger a slowing effect when absorbed, and enemies of a more divine nature that can send COVID-inspired plagues into your settlement, if you don’t. Don’t worship them enough (the only way to fight this plague is to isolate your townsfolk). Imagine the almost overwhelming complexity and importance of God‘s other systems – of which there are many – all work together all the time. It’s bizarre.

Image: Bund/Team17

Most of it is for support God‘s Main story mode that includes handcrafted levels deeply inspired by Slavic mythology and even includes a holiday mechanic that integrates real Slavic celebrations into the game at relevant times of the year. Working on series like The Witcher inspired this in more ways than one – the team not only added monsters from Polish folk tales, but also investigated how The witcher 3 slightly distracted from the hardcore roots of the first two Witchers Games to appeal to a wider audience. This is partly why God pivoted from horror strategy to adventure strategy, and a reason why the game has now added an alternate survival mode called Custom Scenarios, which features over 1,000 semi-random character profiles, dozens of customization switches, and more.

What I found most interesting, however, is that a major reason for the developers to draw on their own heritage was to not only introduce it to the rest of the world, but also to promote it in their own culture. Corresponding God Game Director Stan Just, it’s often neglected in schools – even beyond mythology, it may not be obvious to some people that Gords were genuine architectural structures from Polish and German history. He attributes this to Poland’s status as an Orthodox Christian country, explaining that some of its older traditions could be considered paganism, before pointing out how his friend’s book was banned for addressing the fact that snails are hermaphrodites.

“There [according to them] it doesn’t teach us the right way to have families and genders,” Just told me during a hands-off demo of God. “Our teaching system is not great. We’re making a game that gives everyone the middle finger. It is our world and we can create it from scratch.”

as it stands God looks very impressive. Just saying that many of the systems are complete and that the next year or so will be devoted solely to balancing and tweaking all of the interactions between them. He explains that some of these systems are as insignificant as a squirrel biting you for 1 hit point rimworld – Due to economies of scale, you don’t always have to bother with these little concepts, but when you do, you’ll be rewarded for it.

As a debut Covenant title, there’s plenty to do God. It’s extremely ambitious and more than a small niche, but after spending an hour watching a demo and discussing the game at length, I’m convinced that it has tremendous potential and promise. Maybe Just and his team will still manage to bring their mythology and culture into the mainstream.