Turn-based tactical strategy in a low-fantasy medieval Slavic world.
Retake your family’s stronghold from a foreign warband and raise it from the ruins.
Gameplay
The game has three layers: the stronghold, the world map and the battlefield. Each has its own rules, but they are all connected: the forge arms your warband, the warband guards the sawmill and the mines out in the field, and without them the forge has nothing to work with. Hover a screenshot and a gold outline marks the elements that have a note; hover one of them (tap it on a phone) to see it enlarged, with a short explanation of what it does.
Here you lead your warbands, raise buildings in the field and watch the stronghold’s supplies.
A turn-based fight on hexes. Every soldier has movement and action points, and terrain gives cover.
World
No dragons, no elves, no mages. The forest is walked by people in patched mail who remember exactly who took what from them.
Mściwoj, your father’s gray-bearded counselor. Hanka of Garwolin, the field surgeon your father trusted. In the infirmary she tends your wounded. Stanisław, the best smith around, forges blades for your men in the hold’s smithy.
The Tucholski Forest runs farther than your rations allow. Black Water Keep lies beyond Beekeepers’ Marsh, but it only appears on the map after you win the battle that opens the road to it.
You start with three peasants. From level 3 a peasant can be promoted to warrior or archer, and in the towns you’ll hire knights and crossbowmen. Every soldier has four attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution and Will. From level 2 every new level brings a perk, that is a new skill, and from level 5 veterans can be trained into captains who lead others.
Bandits, robbers, deserters, marauders and mercenaries roam the map. Each hostile village sends bands onto your roads every eight days until you take it.
Systems
Every weapon except thrown ones has three moves, and related weapons share some of them: the sword has Riposte, the crossbow Decisive Shot, the spear Spear Wall. A character learns them at levels 2, 4 and 6, and the moves of a weapon that suits their class one level sooner: a knight’s sword moves, for instance, or an archer’s bow moves. A peasant fights with a basic attack only. A move costs action points, and most can be used again only after two or three turns.
An enemy that hasn’t attacked yet this turn and isn’t already in melee guards the six hexes around it. Step onto one and you stop there, locked in melee with it. In melee you can attack only that opponent, and whoever walks away loses 10 hit points. Neither shield nor armor reduces that loss.
A soldier standing in a forest takes half damage; sparse woods and scree cut damage by a quarter. A wall right next to a soldier works like a forest: arrows and thrown weapons from the other side of the wall deal half damage. The battle map is built from the world map hexes around the fight, so the terrain depends on where the battle starts.
The forge makes weapons and armor; the bowyer makes bows, crossbows and thrown weapons. In the forge you first hire an apprentice, then a platesmith for armor or a swordsmith for weapons. Only they can work steel and make fine gear, and masterwork gear in their own specialty. Materials are bronze, iron or steel; quality is common, fine or masterwork.
A warband can hunt once a day. The chance of finding game depends on terrain, from 30% on plains to 80% in deep forest. If you find it, you fight it like any other enemy, and a win brings food and hides for armor.
You can lead several warbands at once; only wages and food limit how many. Each moves across the map on its own: one hunts, another chases raiders, a third stays in the stronghold and holds off attackers.
Enemy archers shoot from range and back off when someone with a melee weapon comes close. The rest prefer to attack your ranged troops and badly wounded men. An enemy whose morale drops to zero flees the battlefield.
The campaign has five endings. Which one you see depends on your decisions, but none of them is a happy one.
Release
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