The flipside of how smoothly Going Medieval’s little settlements run themselves, however, is that I found the game almost devoid of challenge. But the fact that my instincts translated across so effortlessly shows what a robust job Foxy Voxel have done. It helps that I already know RimWorld back to front, I suppose. I was impressed with how rarely my little yokels acted with disastrous lack of foresight, and how little time I had to spend either micromanaging them, or working out why the hell supposedly basic things weren’t happening. RimWorld didn't have modelled seasonal changes for quite a while into its early access period, but it's already implemented in Going Medieval and looking great. Developers Foxy Voxel have cherry-picked bits and bobs from all over that game’s lifespan to populate their day one feature list, while also building in a bunch of the quality of life fixes which RimWorld dev Tynan Sylvester patched in as he went along. But to be even more fair, it owes that head start almost entirely to RimWorld. Doesn't that make you feel good?Īlso, to be fair, while Going Medieval is still in that fairly barren, aimless state which all early access sandbox games are born into, it’s a much more solid play than RimWorld was at the same point in its lifecycle. Look at this lovely cellar full of barrels and that. I’m almost embarrassed by how huge a difference it makes to me, to be able to build proper halls with thatched roofs, stone keeps looming over forests, and cellars packed with smoked meats and hay. Just imagine RimWorld, but with lutes and stuff, and you can build things on top of each other. What’s it like to play? As I said, like RimWorld. Through a combination of luck and judgement - and assembling the triforce of colony simulation, multiple z-layers and an easily comprehensible interface - Going Medieval has shot the Steam Knight right in the bonce. But they were either shit, or abandoned, or simply unlucky, wizening instantly into skeletons under the pitiless gaze of the immortal Steam Knight. I know other games have reached for this particular grail, over the years. What about 2010’s Bum Forts, Nate? Fuck’s sake, man, how can you ignore 2014’s Skyscrapers Of The Dogmen? Actually, Nate, I think you’ll find 2012’s criminally overlooked Goblin Slumlord did both things magnificently. As such, the world had no choice but to wait another five years to get it a man that could do both. Dwarf Fortress had three dimensions but wasn’t accessible RimWorld was the other way round. And despite all the marvellous complexity it would go on to acquire in other respects, its flatness would remain hardwired into the foundations of the game. I particularly like the fact that research is conducted by people actually writing scrolls, which then need to be stored somewhere - eventually, you find yourself inventing the library, which is immensely satisfying.īut RimWorld, for all its accessibility, had taken the step back into two dimensions. Indeed, so were all of the rest of its pleasures, until RimWorld appeared in 2016 I know I'm stressing the point that Going Medieval doesn't add much to the RimWorld formula besides the obvious, but it does have some original flourishes. Even so, to the vast majority of humanity still stuck on the steep side of the famous Dwarf Fortress learning curve, the pleasure was entirely inaccessible. It gained its so-called z-levels at the end of 2007, and the effect was transformative. Dwarf Fortress, the game which RimWorld itself took inspiration from, was originally played in a flat, one-layer world. Honestly, it spanners my brain to think that it has taken this long. That’s Going Medieval’s killer feature, and I’m saying that with a completely straight face. You can build multi-storey constructions. But the wooden beam unlocks the singular piece of magic which marks Going Medieval out as a competitor to the game it otherwise imitates: the third dimension. It’s nothing much by itself just a fat stick, really, which spans the gap between two facing walls. The wooden beam is one of the first technologies you can research in the game. After a moment or two to get used to the UI, I was playing my first game on autopilot, and all it really did for me was make me want to play RimWorld. As in, identical, save for a medieval setting and a ton of missing features. But pre-alpha colony sims are like the planktonic larvae of crabs - there’s millions of them, and most of them get eaten by fish, so I don’t tend to pay attention to them until they’re big enough to nip my fingers.Įven when Going Medieval did scuttle into early access at the start of the month, I have to say it seemed a blunt-clawed specimen. It’s funny, isn’t it, the things which make you fall in love with a game? I’d first heard of early access colony sim Going Medieval two years ago, at the very start of its development.
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