Siege Survival: Gloria Victis is a brand-new title from Ravenscourt and Black Eye Games set in the same world as the popular Gloria Victis MMORPG. While Gloria Victis focuses on combat and large-scale warfare, Siege Survival places players in the role of the people affected by a war-torn land. Placed inside a besieged castle, players must craft, scavenge, and survive while supplying the castle's last line of defense against the siege outside.

The preview build of Siege Survival: Gloria Victis provided contained the "Edring’s Last Stand" scenario, introducing players to the game's basic functions and allowing them to get a feel for how the mechanics work. The entire preview took about four hours to complete, which is around half of the total game. With a gritty, medieval feel, Siege Survival: Gloria Victis feels like many other games in the survival genre, focusing on crafting better and better items as time goes on.

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Edring’s Last Stand

The preview starts with a single civilian, Flint, waking up inside the walls of a castle under siege. The city outside has already fallen, and much of the castle is in ruins. It is up to the player to craft supplies to repair the castle, recruit other survivors, feed the hungry populace, and deliver supplies to the castle's defenders. Materials are scarce, so by night, players must send out a citizen to sneak through the ravaged city and scavenge what they can, tending to their wounds and illnesses when they return.

As Flint clears away the rubble, tends to a comrade, and starts to rebuild inside the wall, the day gives way to the night where he must scavenge for supplies. During this time, Flint sneaks through the ruins of the village, trying not to make too much noise while looking for wood, herbs, freshwater, and more. If he is caught, he could die. There are even ways to collect injuries, or illnesses, like spending too much time around a rotting corpse.

Eventually, Flint gets some help, allowing players to have two workers perform tasks such as tending to animals and making arrows. As the preview moves along, things get more complicated, forcing players to prioritize their tasks as day turns to night and back to day again.

The focus on the game is very much on survival, with many choices or actions causing players workers to become wounded, ill, or exhausted. There is little way around this; such is the life of these poor souls. There are days where it rains and days where the enemies outside the castle send rocks and flaming arrows over the walls. Players can find ways to mitigate these events, but everything takes valuable time and resources, taking those things away from other actionable items that need tending.

It is an interesting mix of crafting, survival, and accounting. Players must use whatever materials they can in the most efficient ways possible while keeping their workers fed, rested, and healthy. At different points in Siege Survival, there are tough choices to make. Do you help bolster the soldier's strength further or tend to your workers, keeping up their morale as the stress of their daily toil takes its toll? Every choice has its own benefit and consequence, with no right or wrong answer.

A Slow Burn

Siege Survival: Gloria VIctis Castle

Siege Survival: Gloria Victis is a slow burn, with many tasks taking precious time to complete. The game is not one for players short on patience, though those interested enough to pick up the title will most likely know what they are getting into. The biggest problem with the game is its save system, which autosaves at the start of each day. This means that if players are forced to load up a save, they will have lost all their daily progress, which can often feel a bit frustrating. Again, many similar titles save in the same way, so it is to be expected.

While the full game will only be around eight hours of playtime, gamers will spend more time as they are expected to reload a saved file to choose a different path or keep their workers from dying. The preview was fairly easy, so it is tough to say if this will actually be the case or not when the full game comes out.

Siege Survival: Gloria Victis releases Q2, 2021 for the PC

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