Gord Is Aiming to Cross The Witcher with Rimworld (and the Signs are Good)

Because Gord isn’t just a strategy game, or even simply a game about defending the settlement. It’s also a small-scale strategy game, allowing you to arm your strongest villagers and take them out into the wider world, whether to kill off threats, prevent raids, loot treasures, or more. Sometimes, your village itself will offer quests that take you out, but there’s also a full story campaign mode that will see major objectives offered throughout your time in the wilderness.

The pre-beta version I see isn’t exactly pretty, with some fairly basic animations making combat feel a little less than dynamic, but there’s a lot going on under the hood. Villagers can be armed in different ways, and assigned to different groups, even allowing you to add some light automation (you can assign stronger axe-wielding warriors to move and protect weaker bow users, for example). Location is important, too, as both you and your enemies can get buffs or debuffs for the terrain around them.

On top of that, you can use Faith – a currency of sorts generated by having your villagers worship at a temple – to call on the gods to offer protective or offensive spells. The damaging spells are a highlight – these gods don’t seem to be all that merciful, with one spell sending worms to infest a target, and another getting them to hover in the air as their bones are twisted into unnatural positions.

Enemies themselves come in many forms, from natural beasts, twisted humanoids and, most excitingly, the Horrors. Horrors are underworld demons of various shapes and sizes that have been placed across Gord’s world, and represent the most threatening figures you can find. Brilliantly, these aren’t just totally hostile bosses – a Horror could visit your village and ask for a gift. That could be your gold, your crops… or your children. In the early stages, you might just have to take that deal – reject them, and they may curse your village, infesting it with insects, summoning a tornado, or worse.

But crucially, these more traditional adventure sections tie back into that Rimworld-like set up. A death while out on patrol could devastate your villagers – especially if you can’t recover and bury the corpse. Sustain an injury or lose sanity, and a warrior might suddenly have a physical ailment or mental affliction that affects them back home. Avoid those things, and your villagers will gain experience in their assigned professions over time – perhaps, after enough training, you’ll be able to send out a force and exact revenge on the Horror that took your kids.

Gord feels built to tell endless stories, and Covenant is accounting for that by including a full custom scenarios mode alongside the campaign. Here, you can micromanage what kind of a world you’re placed into, including the kinds of objectives you want to complete (or simply have no objective, and see how long you can survive) – and those seeds can be shared among players to allow for people to take up the exact same challenge.

Covenant isn’t aiming low. The games the team is aiming to invoke are beloved by their fanbases, but with Gord it’s looking to create something that may earn its own following, on its own terms. I’m more than intrigued to see if it can manage that feat.

Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].