Gord

Gord isn’t the deepest of city builders, and its campaign can sometimes feel like an extended tutorial, but nevertheless, it provides an engaging mix of city building and exploration. With its sanity system and pesky Horrors that need to be dealt with, there’s not much else like this around. Jump into its Custom Scenario mode with both feet, and you’ll likely a find a game that will eat up hours of your time.

As a dark, story-driven settlement sim, Gord offers a moderate amount of replayability and a pretty compelling central narrative.

The gameplay loop is easy to immerse yourself in, and you will get from the story what you put into it, but some rough edges prevent Gord from hitting the big leagues.

With its controls much more suited to the PC than to consoles, Gord is not without flaws in terms of ergonomics and readability, but it largely makes up for it with its tortured atmosphere at will. Survival in a dark fantasy world populated by nightmares is a long succession of tests and crucial choices, especially when madness awaits our units with each new incursion into darkness. Too bad that the strategic stakes impose permanent vigilance on the management side because this is done a little to the detriment of exploration and adventure.

Personally, I found the ‘grim’ nature of Gord just too nasty, the developers often shocking for the sake of it, rather than doing so to support the story or gameplay. Still, there’s a lot to admire about Covenant’s creation, with the game offering a compelling and tense survival RTS experience. Only really worth picking up on PC, mind.