In an interview, the developers tell us how they want to fulfil our wildest Viking dreams. And some of it sounds almost too good to be true
It”s been almost exactly two years since a beautiful trailer made waves among construction fans. The first video for Viking City Builder pulled our Viking socks off with spectacular graphics and ray tracing. But since the ambitious project was overseen by a solo developer at the time, the big question was of course: Can this actually be as cool as it looks? Or will it turn out to be a castle in the air like so many other building games with great ideas?
So, as part of our build-up week at GlobalESportNews , we paid the developer a virtual visit for the second time and pestered him with all the questions that were burning under our axe blades. And a warning right away: If you were already impatiently waiting for Viking City Builder, then you will probably hardly be able to bear the wait after this preview.
What is the status of Viking City Builder in 2022?
First, feel free to check out these fresh trailer scenes to get you in the mood. The graphics continue to make high promises, our chic Great Hall should elicit nods of approval from Odin:
Since our last preview of the game”s ambitious ideas, a lot has changed in Viking City Builder. Probably the most important change: instead of a single solo dev, the development team has grown to almost 30 people, pretty much a longship crew. The reason is that the Polish studio Titan GameZ is lending a hand at the helm. And of course that means that suddenly completely different scales are possible.
“The size of the team doesn”t just mean that more people are working on it. Under the wings of Titan GameZ, we have made our development process more professional, with specific milestones and dates. (…) Construction games are a very demanding niche. The core gameplay must be of the highest quality. This simple goal requires hundreds of hours of work on the mechanics, over and over again. As a team, you have to put in tons of passion, otherwise it would be hard to deliver the finished product “
When we ask what has actually happened since our last conversation in 2020, the answer is: they have made a lot of progress, the central focus is on the construction aspects, which are supposed to mesh perfectly. In addition, Viking City Builder now contains more buildings, resources and maps than planned back then.
As a player, you have many more tasks than building walls or watchtowers and sending fishing boats out in search of food. The transport routes by which raw materials reach you are also extremely important. You do not place roads and buildings on a predefined grid, but freely according to your own ideas. However, you should make sure that carts arrive safely at their destination and that you have enough warehouses to store resources – otherwise your settlement will probably run out of grain quickly. And the next hard winter is already waiting.
No good city builder can do without complex production chains and Viking City Builders is no exception. You can even work with different raw materials within the same production, for example jewellery. After all, it makes a huge difference whether your craftsman hammers it roughly from bone or cuts it from noble but expensive amber – which is then reflected in the sales price again.
Hard decisions await you
You will also be asked to make crunchy story decisions on a regular basis, which fit perfectly with the fight for survival in the Viking world. In the Great Hall, you”ll rack your helmeted brains to decide which path to take.
It goes something like this:
A cursed child appears in your village. It”s up to you to judge how the settlement deals with it. Will the child be killed along with its mother? Cast out of society? Or will you help the tormented family, perhaps endangering other residents? Little stories like these are meant to show you how different many moral concepts were back then – and how similar some things were.
How do story decisions and construction mesh?
You experience the consequences of your actions in the everyday life of the Viking settlement. Sometimes this can simply translate into additional resources, or perhaps you will achieve new fame or soon be known as a tyrant. The opinions of your inhabitants are important and they will not always agree. In Viking City Builder there are no real factions, but your people are divided into different castes, peasants, nobles and so on. What helps the poorest may be a thorn in the side of the rich.
Another classic decision that countless leaders have faced before you: Do you prefer to send your strongest fighters on a raid to conquer new resources? Or do you leave them at home, where they protect your settlement but also eat your food? A mistake can cost you dearly, in the truest sense of the word. Because just as you raid other villages, they can of course turn the tables on you and declare you their prey.
However, the developers explain to us that this is not supposed to work like in a real RTS. For example, the settlements of the others are not on the same map on which you build your houses and walls. Why is that?
“Having other settlements and battles on the same map as our settlement would make for a completely different game and even genre. It would be more like a classic RTS like Age of Empires. Players would have to concentrate on battles all the time and not really get involved in settlement building. We don”t want to achieve that.
In settlement building, you have some military buildings, like the guardhouse, the watchtower, the palisade. But they work a little differently than in RTS games. Guard towers and palisades influence how often you are raided and how much you lose in battle. The guardhouse determines your internal security, so less crime, more security and more obedient inhabitants in your settlement “
How much explosive power you could unleash in a castle siege, for example, can be seen here in the trailer – however, the scenes are from the pre-alpha phase, so a lot could still change there:
What still remains unclear?
Even after our inspection visit, there are still some unanswered questions. We will probably only find out how Viking City Builder really plays when it is released. But before that, we would like to know about this, for example:
- Are there daily cycles? The developers have already decided that each of our residents will have a daily routine (and, by the way, their own name). However, it has not yet been finally decided whether there will be day-night changes. They say they want to focus on changes in the seasons.
- When will the release be? There is no release date in sight yet, not even a rough year. So it will be a long time before Viking City Builder is released. According to the developers, it doesn”t take too long to add new features. But most of the working hours go into making sure that these mechanics mesh smoothly and are fun to play. That”s why the game should only come out when the time is really right;
- Is PlayWay involved? The controversial publisher is not officially involved in Viking City Builder. However, it does hold shares in the studio Tita GameZ and could therefore be involved, at least indirectly.
- Are the goals achievable? The Viking dream of Viking City Builder sounds fantastic. But despite the team expansion, working hours and budget are of course limited and cannot be compared to AAA projects. So far we haven”t seen any real gameplay, only pre-alpha scenes. And even if the ideas all sound great: Combining all these mechanics might be more difficult than settling disputes between hostile ship crews.
But at least outwardly the developers are optimistic:
We”re already pretty happy with the core gameplay – how many interesting buildings we have, the AI of our villagers, all the simulations. We”re super proud of that. Where there”s still a lot of improvement to be made: User Interface. We are working on a third edition of our UI, each one is a big improvement over the previous one. But the interface determines whether a strategy game fails or shines, so we want to get that as perfect as possible.
Editorial conclusion
To be honest, I wouldn”t have thought that I would write a preview of Viking City Builder until a few days ago. Actually, I”m not a big strategy fan myself. Actually! But maybe I need to rethink that.
Because with a Viking setting and story decisions, it”s easy to win me over for any genre, and what Viking City Builders wants to offer makes even my mouth water a bit. What I find most exciting is how the story and city builder elements are supposed to work together, at least if everything goes as the developers currently envision.
Great, so now I have to add another candidate to my wish list. But don”t let Maurice hear you say that, he”s been trying for months to convince me of the superiority of the strategy.
