Gord Hands-on. In Mouth of Madness in Witcher vs. Settlers Crossover

I openly admit that I had no idea what Gord was and that such a game was being created at all. After reading the short description, my interest didn’t increase above moderate, but everything changed when I started playing the demo. The atmosphere and gameplay were engrossing, although the whole thing was not perfect. However, the show ended for me with such a huge moral dilemma that I don't know how much more time I would need to resolve it. I don't think there are many developers today that would opt for such unobvious plot twists.

In simple words, Gord is probably most similar to Settlers, or perhaps Northgard, except that everything here is much more Slavic, bearing a lot of similarities to the Witcher series! There’s nothing surprising about that, because Gord is created by new, small Polish studio, and the project itself is led by the producer of Wild Hunt. So we have elements of a city builder, or rather a village builder, a plot with specific characters and quests, a dose of survival, spells, and a whole lot of dark fantasy. Thanks to the well-written story, there’s no anonymous crowd of citizens here like typical workers and soldiers. Every member of the community has a name and personality, which entails slightly more micromanagement, but also some interesting mechanics.

Building a village is just a bonus

In Gord, almost everything is story-based, which has its pros and cons. Our goal is to prepare the wild lands of the Lysatia for the arrival of the royal armies. Together with a mentor named Boghdan and a wretched king's envoy – Edwyn – constantly watching his hands, we build our small settlement and discover the next secrets of the realm, which It is not free from hostile communities, terrible beasts and magical surprises. Our tasks at the beginning are quite simple. They teach us the basics of how to erect buildings, gather resources, produce food or fortify city walls. However, everything is wrapped in a story background, even if only in the form of a short dialogue that explains the hierarchy of buildings in our city.

Among the clichés, typical story quests also appear soon. From the very beginning, we hear that collecting gold is very important, but to do this, we must first go to the cartographer to learn the appropriate routes and passages. Before that, we are looking for a missing scout and rescue a witch. When we finally get on the road, we have to take through the dark swamps, and a "horror" stands in our path. The local boss, who reminded me a bit of the witch from the Crookback Bog. The interesting thing is that you don't have to fight it at all. You can, but you don't have to. Eh, well, exactly. Moral choices in Gord promise to be really interesting!

Trees obscuring the forest

During the expeditions outside the settlement, exploration and combat are pretty important. In this aspect, I liked Gord a little less, but maybe it's because I didn’t have that much time with the game. In the tested fragment, the available areas were mostly dense, gloomy forests and swamps. They looked very atmospheric, especially in combination with the music evocative of the Witcher, but the area is a little bit unclear as a playground. The forest remains shrouded in darkness, the trees are enormous, and main source of light is the faint flame of torches, and on top of that, we also have the fog of war. All this makes finding small items really difficult. Especially when all we see around is a thicket of dark pixels.

True, we do have some simplifications here like highlighting objects and characters, or tree crowns that become transparent, but to be honest this latter solution is more disorientating than helpful. I felt more like I was blindly walking through a dark forest in FPP mode than watching the action from above. But perhaps this is part of a more realistic graphics style, and a forgoing of the cartoonish, Northgard-like style. Everything has its positive sides. It affects the difficulty, but deepens the already excellent atmosphere.

In the jaws of madness

By linking each stage of the game to quests, we fall into a certain rhythm of completing them whilst keeping the main goal in mind. But after some time, we’re in for quite a brutal clash with reality and the survival elements. It turns out that you cannot simply make a quick trip with one or two characters, leaving the rest to expand the settlement. If we care about keeping people alive, we need to learn how to micromanage a team where everyone has different needs and specializations. Otherwise, they will become fast food for a pack of wolves.

It turns out that before the expedition, it’s necessary to ensure that they are properly fed and hydrated. In addition, we need to control their mental condition, because the characters can fall into insanity. If the character stays in the forest for too long without any light, if they starve or stay dehydrated for too long, or even if they witness the death of someone close to them, they might just go mad and run away into the primordial forest. So it's necessary to keep each of the character stats at the right level.

I must admit that this is how my first session with the game ended. In addition to inattention, there was also poor management of time mechanics, game speed and the active pause, which lets you issue and queue orders. During both clicking attacks in combat and checking the team's condition, it’s worth using these tools frequently and making it a habit.

More than a city builder

However, if our team doesn't go insane, we will take an adventure outside the swamp guarded by a bane called Araden. Of course, as long as we agree to make the greatest sacrifice, or be brave enough to decide to clash openly. This is precisely one of the main advantages of Gord – it doesn't leave us alone with just the economy, building households, and repelling attacks of barbarians. Instead it invites us to an extraordinary, story-driven adventure, during which a lot can happen. Main characters are very expressive and specific – you can immediately feel sympathy or antipathy for each of them. Such narrative experience will, of course, be one-time only, but it should be a game for between 10 to 20 hours. Besides, developers have prepared a separate scenario mode, in which you can freely choose the main objective and level of challenge.

The question is: does a city builder wrapped in an engaging storyline, interesting moral choices and Slavic-Witcher atmosphere sound good enough to give it a chance among other indie games? I believe so! I, a moderate fan of the Wild Hunt, got hooked!