Gord is a single player, adventure strategy game featuring developing societies, eerie forbidden lands, and remarkable mythical creatures. Players complete quests and manage a populace whose personal stories and well-being impact the fate of the settlement.
Who is making it?
Covenant is an indie game developer studio based in Poland, founded in 2020 by Stan Just, ex-CDPR Producer.
As a creative house, we focus on delivering fresh gameplay experiences working only on original proprietary IPs. While Gord will be our first game, we are currently developing another multiplatform title which has not yet been revealed.
Having a lot of game production experience after working for the best polish gamedev companies, we strive to maintain the highest organizational standards and excel at both operational and strategic planning. We are the first and only polish gamedev that holds a globally-recognizable certificate ‘Great Place to Work’.
What makes this game different from other strategy games?
Gord is a single player adventure strategy game set in a dark fantasy world, including elements of city builders and survival adventure games. The game is unique in its fresh gameplay experience that comes from emphasizing the importance of your unit’s mental state while managing a small populace. In Gord, your choices will be driven not only by economic efficiency and moral choices, but they will also be affected by tension and fear brought about by the atmosphere.
What can you tell me about the story and lore in Gord?
Players will take on the role of a king’s steward who is ordered to conquer the wildlands. Right from the start, players are given control over the Tribe of the Dawn, led by the man known as a Village Elder and accompanied by the mysterious Lynx, a magic wielder. The story behind those and other characters will be explored during the narrative campaign, planned for the full release of the game.
There is rich lore scattered across the world of Gord that uncovers the secrets and story behind the birth of the gods in the form of torn pages from a book called The Chronicle.
What are the main inspirations for the game?
Gord takes inspiration from many great games and properties across the adventure and strategy genres, but is markedly unique in its execution. Still, we love playing games, and we certainly looked to developers and titles we admire, in order to develop systems and game elements that help us create the game we’ve dreamed of.
With its lore built upon Slavic mythology and culture, Gord’s atmosphere and tone bears some similarities to The Witcher. The variety of events and raids, as well as some unit management systems, are inspired by RimWorld. Some visual effects and UI elements may bear some resemblance to Frostpunk. At the heart of Gord, there is a city-building management system with a profession-switching mechanic inspired by Northgard. Lastly, we loved how Don’t Starve created a dense and immersive atmosphere of danger through such features like creature sounds coming from the darkness, so we wanted to implement something similar as well.
When will it be released? How much will it cost?
Gord is planned to be released on Steam in 2022.
We’ll announce pricing at a later date.
Will Gord only be released on Steam, or will it be on other storefronts such as GOG and EGS?
TBA
How big is the development team?
There are 10 full-time developers working on the project right now, as well as a few dozen contractors who’ve contributed at various stages.
Is it a multiplayer game?
No. Gord is purely a single player experience.
Will a console port happen in the future?
We would really like that to happen, but it depends heavily on the results of the game’s PC release.
What engine and middleware is it using?
Gord is running on Unreal Engine 4, and also uses Wwise and SpeedTree.
Will there be a physical edition for the game?
We’re not ready to talk about this yet.
What kind of game modes will be playable in Gord?
There will be two single player game modes: Custom Scenarios and the Campaign.
Custom Scenarios will allow players to set the stage for their experience by choosing from a wide range of options. Players can take it easy or set an impossible challenge; almost anything can be adjusted! Choose from a variety of primary objectives, select the level size, the intensity of raids, the environment, the types of enemies, starting resources, and even the severity of weather.
The main Campaign is more of a story-driven experience. Players will lead their people, ensure their survival, and grow their gord from a humble settlement to a formidable fortress. They will experience meaningful narrative elements from NPCs and discover the rich lore behind Gord through the pages of The Chronicle that are scattered throughout the land. The campaign’s main objectives will be supplemented by the AI-driven quest system, which creates ample replayability by offering a variety of challenges to take on while players try to complete the main objectives.
What is the game duration?
The Custom Scenarios mode creates the opportunity to replay the game a near infinite number of times, offering a different experience in each scenario created. These scenarios should take from 1 to 4 hours to complete but can continue to be played after the main objective is met.
The story-driven Campaign mode will take around 10 to 20 hours to complete, depending on your play style and skills.
Will the game be released in Early Access?
We are strongly considering the possibility of an Early Access release to make sure we deliver an exceptional game that players absolutely love. Being able to gather feedback from the community during development would help us understand what is most important to our audience. We will reveal our final decisions about release plans later this year.
What is the current state of the game?
The game is already rather far along in development. Many elements of city building, unit development, user interface, user experience, visuals, and basic combat are already functional.
Currently, we are focusing on the development of our custom level generator and AI-managed quest system. Procedural generation fuels the replayability of our Custom Scenarios game mode, which will be the main part of the initial release.
Our biggest focus before launch will be on the versatility of the quests offered and the variety of our enemies for the combat system.
There’s still a lot to be done, but development is progressing very well. 🙂
Is there combat in the game or just building and colony management?
Yes, we have created a combat system that will be relatively easy to use but will still feel gratifying and satisfactory. As a hybrid game, the player has plenty of things to do with building, exploration, quests, and managing each unit’s wellbeing. However, we wanted to offer something more than a very basic combat system in which each unit just engages the nearest enemy with their one attack.
Even though every profession can participate in a fight, the main combat units players will be able to control are Spearman (higher defense), Axeman (higher damage), and Archer (range). Each unit and enemy has two attacks with different effects, such as a single-target thrust and a multi-target swing. There are a variety of enemies each with their own special attacks, abilities, and buff conditions to keep combat interesting. Later in the game, players will be further engaged in battles with the addition of spellcasting via Incantations.
What languages will the game be available in?
Gord will be available in English (including English voiceovers), Polish, Spanish, French, Russian, Brazilian Portugese, Simplified Chinese, and German. More languages will be localized if there is a demand for it.
What are Sanity and Burden? How do they work?
The Sanity of the subjects is just as important as their physical Health. If a subject doesn’t bleed out after a fight, they may still flee if the psychological damage is too great. Thus, Sanity is the current emotional state of a particular subject. Sanity drops most severely when a subject travels without a light source or after experiencing something terrible, such as the death of a family member. Sanity may be regenerated in a number of ways – for example, in a Meadery or by basking in the warming glow of a torch. However, the most negative stimuli will drop your subjects’ Sanity and also influence their level of Burden.
Burden is the measure of long-term psychological wounds each subject has incurred during their lifetime. While Health and Sanity can be restored, Burdens can only accumulate. Each traumatic event will be noted in that subject’s Journal of Burden. It’s hard to tell in advance how much a subject can handle before they snap and have a mental or physical Breakdown, but when it happens, players will know.
What are the system requirements?
| Suggested Minimum Specifications | OS: Windows 10 (x64)Processor: CORE I5 4670K 3.4GHz / AMD FX 6350 X6 3900 MHzMemory: 16 GB RAMGraphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 / AMD Radeon R9 200 Series or equivalent |
| Suggested Recommended Specifications | OS: Windows 10 (x64)Processor: Intel Core i7 6850K 3.6 GHz / AMD Ryzen 5 2600XMemory: 16 GB RAMGraphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 / MSI Radeon RX 480 or equivalent |
Be advised! Gord is still in development, so those requirements are subject to change before the release!
