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 Digital and Covenant.dev announced that  Gord will emerge from the shadows and launch 8th August on PC (Steam), PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Adventurers and strategy enthusiasts alike can pre-order their copy now for all platforms. Physical edition pre-orders for consoles and digital pre-orders on Steam will receive the additional ‘Hold Your Ground’ scenario for the game’s Custom Scenarios mode, a digital soundtrack, and a digital art book; digital pre-orders for consoles will receive the ‘Hold Your Ground’ scenario only. 

Those who can’t wait until launch to test their mettle in Gord’s ruthless world of horrific beasts and rich lore inspired by Slavic folktales, can sink their teeth into an English language-only demo from next week, 19-26th June, during Steam Next Fest.

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:

• Mature Dark Fantasy Adventure: Lead the people of the Tribe of the Dawn and venture deep into forbidden lands in a lore-rich, dark fantasy strategy campaign
• Build to Survive, Conquer to Prevail: Grow your gord from humble settlement to formidable fortress while protecting your citizens from invading tribes, gruesome monsters, and mysterious powers that lurk within the surrounding woods
• Unique Sanity System: Keep a close eye on your townsfolk as everything from illness to hunger and the death of kin can have devastating impact on their lives and well-being
• Hand-Crafted Quests: Take on a wide variety of quests and random encounters that will lead you deep into the wilderness to hunt legendary creatures, uncover ancient secrets, and vanquish deadly scourges
• Powerful Incantations: Unlock a variety of offensive and defensive spells to tip combat in your favour, each with custom animations and potentially gruesome results
• Custom Scenarios mode with Procedurally Generated Levels: Take on an endless variety of challenges by creating your own scenarios. Customize your playthrough by picking a main objective, choosing your starting party, level size, number of resources, enemy types, raid intensities, and even the severity of the weather!

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 PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam) on August 8, 2023.