Siege Survival: Gloria Victis

Survival, thy name is urgency. If there's one thing that Siege Survival: Gloria Victis does very well, it's instilling that sense of maximizing movement to keep the survivors of the attack alive through resource gathering and management. This game isn't very forgiving if you allow your attention to drift or you build items that aren't needed. After all, not only do you have to keep the morale and supplies of the soldiers up, but you also have to keep the citizens and livestock from starving to death. At times, it almost feels overwhelming. There are very few moments to take a deep breath. And to make things even more interesting, you only have so many inventory slots, so you have to decide what to harvest and return to the city. The randomness of resource gathering adds additional challenge, because you'll see a resource node, and it's basically a surprise what it contains.

From a technical standpoint, Siege Survival does well with its graphics. There's nice detail in the castle and town, but the camera doesn't always focus on the action you need to look at, so you'll have to use the keyboard to actively scan the viewable area. And there are occasional pathing problems for characters. See, enemies have a vision cone, but they can also hear if your citizen is rummaging too loudly or running and making too much noise. But both player-controlled and non-player characters (NPCs) get lost in accomplishing their tasks. At least the weather adds an interesting element, and the story drives the gameplay nicely. Siege Survival has nice customizable content (game length, starting characters, difficulty elements, or access to play-created content), but, unfortunately, you can't unlock it unless you survive a week of night-time scavenging, which could be daunting for some players. The intensity of Siege Survival: Gloria Victis pushes it beyond the scope of younger players, but it would be a good fit for veteran tactical survival fans.