Hearthlands

Hearthlands is an economic strategy game from city builder genre created by a small studio called Sergio & Simon. Unlike other games such as Cities: Skylines or SimCity, this title has nothing in common with modern metropolises.

Mechanics

Hearthlands, released on PC Windows, is set in a fictional medieval fantasy world (randomly generated with each new game). We play as a ruler of a small kingdom who basically has only lands around their castle. Our goal is to develop our lands and make sure that our people are safe and live in prosperity. But in order to do that we can't do everything by yourself. Instead, we construct new buildings, make sure that goods are distributed properly, research new technologies etc.

The developers created many buildings with various properties. For example, cabins bring new people to our kingdom, a field allows them to work, they can trade on market and roads connect all of this. Of course, everything requires money and resources so we have to maintain the right balance, e.g. building too much houses means that they can be empty and we will lose both money and resources.

Freedom that the gameplay offers is this game's strong point. This allows us to turn our city into a true military fortress, a trading metropolis or a small city where the main source of profit comes from fishing. We should also remember about our neighbors – we can have good relations with them or attack if our army is strong enough. This depends on kingdom's economy because units require certain resources (iron, wood, hide etc.) that are necessary for making equipment. We can recruit powerful heroes that are typical for this genre but we need to meet certain requirements, e.g. build a tower for a mage. What is interesting is that heroes can be recruited for something more than just fights, e.g. dwarfs are great for working in mines.

Technical aspects

Hearthlands is an indie game with rather simple graphics. The game is more similar to older productions rather than the newer ones. However, the gameplay's complexity is enough to make up for it.

Last updated on July 26, 2017