This is the second time in two days I’ve seen a trailer for a game that’s about building a castle by hand then trying to knock someone else’s castle down. It’s a… weirdly niche kind of genre, when you think about it, but if this is the latest thing people are rushing to try their hands at, then awesome.
Over the past few years, we’ve had way too many zombie and survival games. The zombie games got old because few ever managed to really nail the appeal of zombies (it’s the apocalypse, not the zombies themselves), and survival games (a few pretty examples excepted) are about as fun as locking yourself in a room and starving to death.
I can understand the rush: everyone wants a piece of the pies that Minecraft and DayZ have been feasting on for years. But it’s boring, and if developers are all going to go and make the same kind of game, it may as well be something as focused and dumb (in a fun way) as this.
This game’s called Medieval Engineers, and appears to sit alongside Reign of Kings quite nicely. Where RoK seems more about the massed combat, ME appears to take the construction of its castles a lot more seriously, with prettier (and more elaborate) visuals and more flexibility.
Between them they might have the spectrum covered, whether you want to build and fight, but do one better than the other. Maybe there’s room for more games like this that do both, maybe there’s not, but I’m hoping that with two of these popping up in two days a few more studios at least give it a shot.
Medieval Engineers is up on Steam Greenlight.
Comments
10 responses to “If This Is 2015’s Latest PC Trend, I’m Cool With That”
Oh Luke, you could have at least mentioned that it’s being developed by the same company making Space Engineers (and on the same engine). Combat will be added in time. Just note that at present it apparently requires a monster computer if you do any real-time physics destruction of castles..
I wonder how big you can build castles as, i mean is there a capacity of making 1km tall castles?
If you want your computer to melt, probably… It seems to be sort of unoptomised right now like Space Engineers first was, and still is in some cases.
Game also requires you to build your castle properly in that it needs support or else it’ll fall over.
It isn’t that bad, have been having a swing with a underground (so far) citadel and I have had no problems trying to take chunks out of it with little in the way of fps drop.
I’m looking forward to structural stress simulation making it’s way in Space Engineers. RIP Nebulon-B Frigates.
space engineers is coming to xbox one, i hope this game makes it too.
While I understand the intent, the comment is 110% undeserved. These guys made Space Engineers, one of the top 3 supported Early Access games on Steam. The other two being Kerbal Space Program and DayZ (yes, it really is despite the undeserved negativity). Infact I’m inclined to say Space Engineers is the MOST supported given it’s got constant, constant updates, a giant community and has grown from a simple ‘minecraft in space’ game which was ‘below me’ at one point to something that’s outgrown me it now perplexes me in how exactly it works. It’s outright incredible.
I bought Medieval Engineers on developer rep alone today, these guys *deserve* the faith and support based on Space Engineers alone. It’s not ‘dumb fun’, it’s quite intelligent. Constructing Trebuchets, catapults, working gear systems, pulley systems etc is intricate as hell and quite amazing. That’s just with the first alpha release with only 1 minor patch. I’m fearful of where we’ll be with this game in a year almost, just because if it’s this good right now, in a year, goddamn. It’s got a destruction engine to rival EA’s ‘Frostbite’ engine, seriously, and the way those castles crumble when they’re smashed with dynamic damage is fantastic.
It’s only dumb, if you’re willing to let it be. This is one of those rare games where the time and effort you put into it determines the rewards that you get out of it.
Man I love space engineers. It’s taken Minecraft’s slot in my life. The weekly updates on this game, the community engagement and the steam workshop make it constantly changing game. But one that you can invest time into.
Also they recently announce that techniques learnt in Medieval Engineers may be implemented to make planets in Space Engineers.
http://blog.marekrosa.org/2015/02/space-engineers-planets-oxygen-directx_18.html
/fanboy
Hey this sounds like Rampart – albeit a hell of a lot more involved than I remember Rampart being on the master system lol.. that game rocked.