During Gamescom I sat down to play the new farming-sim/survival game Romestead, a game that fulfils every man’s fantasy of rebuilding Rome.
They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, though I'm sure some players will try, and by the end of my demo all I had to show for my work was a few fences, a leatherworker and a few blessings from the Gods themselves.
Romestead is set after the fall of Rome and it’s up to you to restore it to its former glory. This doesn’t just mean rebuilding the city, it means populating it too.
From humble beginnings you form a minuscule settlement that you gradually add to as time goes by as you farm resources, find residents and make offerings to the Gods to increase your chance of survival and success.
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Monsters roam the lands but carry valuable resources, and part of my demo involved fighting an enormous bird before sacrificing one of its eyes to the gods.
The gameplay was relatively simple but like most games in this genre I’d imagine things get more complicated as you progress, but luckily you’ll be able to play it with friends to lighten the load. After all there’s a lot of pressure to go with rebuilding a civilisation.
There are dungeons to raid and skilled workers to find out in the open world, and while you can assign your residents to whatever role you need most their skills might be better served elsewhere.
As someone who rarely has the patience to play Stardew Valley for more than an hour, or scraps his Minecraft world after a couple of days, I can genuinely see myself playing Romestead for quite a while.
This is partly due to the amount of control you have over your settlement as well as how hands-on the building mechanic is (it’s essentially a rhythm game as your characters put a hammer to nails), but I also love the idea of a survival game set in a world of mythology.
I’m looking forward to seeing which other Roman Gods can be interacted with and what secrets await in its open-world, and of course convincing some friends to join me in rebuilding Rome.
Romestead doesn’t currently have a release date but it’ll be launching on Steam.