Get medieval with upcoming strategy game Rising Lords

Cologne-based development team Argonwood have released a tantalising teaser trailer for their upcoming strategy game Rising Lords. Rising Lords has a robust single player campaign and four player multiplayer support.

Rising Lords is a turn-based strategy game where the player takes the role of a medieval lord. As ruler, the player must ensure that their kingdom prospers, and defend it from neighbouring kingdoms. Aside from defence, the player must also monitor taxes and food production, gather resources, and negotiate with allies. Gameplay is turn-based, but features RPG elements, as well as inspiration from card and board games.

In the trailer, we are shown gameplay, including some of the combat and RPG elements. The game seems to take a lot of inspiration from the Civilization games, such as the hexagonal grid that units move and the focus on maintaining a kingdom and managing alliances with others. However, unlike those games, Rising Lords is quite squarely set in the medieval era, and has a rather charming art style and soundtrack evocative of that period.

The game offers lots of options for gameplay, including negotiation, direct combat, or seizing resources  to starve out your opponents.  The four-player simultaneous multiplayer is also interesting, as it provides opportunities to play mind games with your opponents. There are over 50 different random events, as well as unit morale and terrain, all of which influences the game.

Although this is not Argonwood’s first title, it is certainly their largest and most ambitious. Rising Lords is still in development, and will release for PC via Steam in 2019.