As a game focused wholly on its story, Siege Survival: Gloria Victis is very invested in its character development and accuracy in its time and theme. Blackeye Games and FishTankStudio have successfully ventured out and created a game that is very entertaining with its strategical and over-thinking genre allowing you to immerse yourself in its story and carry out your immersion through realistic thinking in its gameplay.

There’s so much to adore about the set up to the game, you’re thrown into dialogue-heavy and highly detailed cinematography for a game that’s based around an overview strategy game, with so much detailed art to go along with the multiple-choice storyline, that doesn’t seem to change much about the game overall, but gives you different information on different routes in its initial introduction.

You’re under siege from an invading group named the Ismirs; the savage warriors of Kargald have invaded your home. Having to defend your home in the spur of the moment, you have to make a choice. Aside from the story we got to play in the preview, players now have a few extra gameplay options to choose from, rather than just the story. Quick Start & Explorer are two of the more familiar choices, but you also have new challenges, such as Scavenger, Defender, or Survivalist, and finally, we have the option of a custom game, allowing you to create your own experience, or share one from the community.

You have two cycles in which you play; Day and night. During the day you prepare, build, care for your animals and otherwise. You are required to craft, tend to the animals, clean up after the battles, prepare and send supplies to your bastion to help hold out the war for your NPCs. Now, with the full release, NPCs are also able to give you quests that you can complete during the night cycle. During the night, you scavenge for materials. Of course, it’s not just as simple as that.

There are patrols carried out by the invaders whom you can fight or sneak around, all while avoiding or removing obstacles that stop you from moving to separate areas. You’ll also find this is generally when you’ll get the most use out of the tools you spent all day creating.

There’s nothing new to its controls compared to other titles. You just seem to click and wait for your characters to follow through with their actions. After that, it’s a waiting game, and even while scavenging, it’s a very simple concept. As simple as the controls may be, you’ll be busy trying to keep on top of the tasks you’re completing, as you will need to be multi-tasking and juggling tools to operate different sections of the game.

This game has had a lot of effort put into the small details, making it satisfying to watch the original opening cinematography on top of the beautiful art with all dialogue and lore explanation. However, the actual gameplay and map are very basic and not overly detailed compared to other sections of the game.

This game is designed to immerse you in a unique historical story while challenging you by requiring you to balance your resources and production, and proving that even the most repetitive tasks can be important to your survival. Ignoring that boring task that seems to achieve nothing might just doom your resistance. The monotony is broken up by the inclusion of the night cycle which allows you to wander the environment, gathering supplies, scouting, or taking the fight to the enemy. This feature really helps to break up the repetition and sets Siege Survival: Gloria Victis apart from similar titles.

The artistic styles used during the cutscenes, as well as the stories used for the main character, are what I adored most. The style that has been used to develop the story is very intriguing, and it’s kept me wanting to defeat the incoming horde and complete my journey.

Written by: Caitlin