Gord is a single-player, adventure strategy game featuring developing societies, eerie forbidden lands, and remarkable mythical creatures. The unique survival, quest, and city-builder elements will keep players on their toes as they play through the procedurally generated scenarios.

Players complete quests and manage a populace whose personal stories and well-being impact the fate of the settlement. The game is unique in its fresh gameplay experience that comes from emphasizing the importance of your unit's mental state while managing a small populace. In Gord, your choices will be driven not only by economic efficiency and moral choices, but they will also be affected by tension and fear brought about by the atmosphere.

Players will take on the role of a king's steward who is ordered to conquer the wildlands. Right from the start, players are given control over the Tribe of the Dawn, led by the man known as a Village Elder and accompanied by the mysterious Lynx, a magic wielder. The story behind those and other characters will be explored during the narrative campaign, planned for the full release of the game.

Gord takes inspiration from many great games and properties across the adventure and strategy genres, but is markedly unique in its execution. Still, we love playing games, and we certainly looked to developers and titles we admire, in order to develop systems and game elements that help us create the game we’ve dreamed of.

With its lore built upon Slavic mythology and culture, Gord’s atmosphere and tone bears some similarities to The Witcher. The variety of events and raids, as well as some unit management systems, are inspired by RimWorld. Some visual effects and UI elements may bear some resemblance to Frostpunk. At the heart of Gord, there is a city-building management system with a profession-switching mechanic inspired by Northgard. Lastly, we loved how Don’t Starve created a dense and immersive atmosphere of danger through such features like creature sounds coming from the darkness, so we wanted to implement something similar as well.  There is rich lore scattered across the world of Gord that uncovers the secrets and story behind the birth of the gods in the form of torn pages from a book called The Chronicle.

Team17 announced that it will be working with Polish developer Covenant.dev to bring Gord to PC.

“Gord is our debut game as a studio, and we're thrilled to have Team17 as our publishing partner. They have an excellent global track record and have repeatedly proven that they care about smaller teams and helping them realise their vision. Gord is an unapologetically dark and sometimes quite confronting game; Team17 has been hugely supportive in helping us bring it to life and home in on what we really feel makes our world special. We look forward to sharing more soon,” commented Covenant.dev CEO Stan Just.

"The team at Covenant.dev already has an impressive development pedigree and Gord’s relentlessly bleak world and unique combination of city building, survival, strategy, and adventure promises something brand-new for PC players looking for a deeper and more mature experience. Bringing Gord onto our label solidifies our commitment to super high-quality and diverse games and we look forward to working with Stan and his team to welcome players to its brutal dark fantasy world,” added Team17 head of publishing Harley Homewood.

There will be two single player game modes: Custom Scenarios and the Campaign.

Custom Scenarios will allow players to set the stage for their experience by choosing from a wide range of options. Players can take it easy or set an impossible challenge; almost anything can be adjusted! Choose from a variety of primary objectives, select the level size, the intensity of raids, the environment, the types of enemies, starting resources, and even the severity of weather.

The main Campaign is more of a story-driven experience. Players will lead their people, ensure their survival, and grow their gord from a humble settlement to a formidable fortress. They will experience meaningful narrative elements from NPCs and discover the rich lore behind Gord through the pages of The Chronicle that are scattered throughout the land. The campaign’s main objectives will be supplemented by the AI-driven quest system, which creates ample replayability by offering a variety of challenges to take on while players try to complete the main objectives.

Key Features:

• Adventure strategy in a dark fantasy setting - Lead the people of the Tribe of the Dawn as they venture deep into forbidden lands and ensure the survival of your populace in a grim fantasy world inspired by Slavic folklore.
• A unique city-builder with survival elements - Grow your gord from a humble settlement to a formidable fortress while your population is constantly at risk from enemy tribes, gruesome monsters, and mysterious powers that lurk in the surrounding woods.
• AI-driven quest system to ensure lots of variety - Side quests and random encounters will send you off into the wilderness to hunt down legendary creatures, uncover secrets about the Ancients, or vanquish a nasty scourge.
• Custom scenarios with procedural level generation - Choose from a variety of primary objectives, select the level size, the intensity of raids, the environment you’ll play in, the types of enemies you’ll face, starting resources, and even the severity of the weather.
• Impactful Sanity and Burden systems - Every aspect of your settlers’ lives - from illness and hunger to the death of their kin - can impact your villagers' psychological state.
• Unleash powerful Incantations - Spells vary in nature - some are offensive while others are defensive - but they all help to tip the battlefield in your favor.
• Uncover the world’s mysteries in The Chronicle - Pages torn from The Chronicle will be scattered throughout the game’s landscapes, giving dedicated players an additional challenge of discovering lore that explains the Gord universe.

Covenant.dev is a 24-person creative development house including alumni from prominent Polish developers CD Projekt RED (The Witcher 3), 11 bit studios (Frostpunk), and Flying Wild Hog (Shadow Warrior 2). Headed by Chief Executive Officer, Stan Just, former producer on The Witcher 3, Gord is the studio’s debut title and aims to deliver players a mature and unforgiving strategy experience.

Gord is coming to PC (Steam) in 2022.