Lumberjacks can collect wood, for instance. You’ll need people to pick mushrooms and stock them in a silo as food, for hunger can lead your populace to starvation and insanity Dark And Darker Gold. Scouts can build and be set on top of a tower to increase your field of vision. Spas and meaderies can help out heal your citizens’ health and sanity, respectively, and so on.
You read that right, by the way: sanity. This isn’t a horror game, despite its gruesome imagery and dour tone, but the sanity of your citizens can and will be affected by the hardships of simply living in constant fear of being killed by a monster, not knowing when you’ll eat your next meal, or even seeing others die, especially their kin. To make matters worse, if, say, one of your units falls in battle, but manages to be revived by another one (there is a mechanic that allows you to do that), said unit will come back with incurable diseases or other issues, effectively rendering them useless in battle, but maybe useful in some menial task, such as food picking. That being said, if you are running low on resources, having a handicap citizen might be hindrance, forcing you to sacrifice them somehow. Decisions and consequences.
Gord is quite unforgiving with its mechanics and randomly generated miniquests. If the act of being attacked by giant monsters wasn’t punitive enough, there will be occasional quests given to you by your own subjects, which are harsh and can lead to some additional items… or your demise. Then again, I did enjoy earning spells on occasion, which would grant me the ever so rare sensation of not being so underpowered when having to fight against, say, a giant tentacled swamp monster.
Gord‘s mechanics are its main selling point, but if there is one thing I truly liked from this game, that would be its presentation, especially considering its indie status (sure, it was made by former Witcher developers buy Dark And Darker Gold Coins, but it didn’t particularly have the largest of budgets) and the fact most strategy games of this day and age don’t go for the most pristine of graphics. Granted, it looks great for PS4 / Xbox One standards, not exactly next gen, but it’s decent enough, especially during its in-engine cutscenes in between missions.
