Games in the ‘bleak struggle for survival’ genre like Siege Survival: Gloria Victis live in the shadow of Frostpunk, a rich and clever game that thrived on hopelessness. Frostpunk would likely have failed as a game had it not married its grimy bleakness with a sense of wonder as new steampunk technologies were discovered, and players experienced a conflicting sense of progression as they staggered onwards towards near-certain death.
Siege Survival lacks this key component and falls flat because of it. At no point did I feel as though I were progressing in a meaningful way, merely subsisting. I can’t fault the game for that since the core of its premise is a siege: a slow and steady endurance under bitter contest. But it’s for exactly that reason other games and movies so often overlook the actual siege part of sieging a fortress and skip straight to assaulting the walls – as terrifying as it may be in an existential sense, a siege is a pretty dull thing to actually live through. Hell, a few years ago, a thrilling movie could have been made about a global pandemic – but now we all know too well that being besieged by a virus is nothing but repetition punctuated by tragedy.
The game is a top-down third-person affair, distinct from Frostpunk’s birds-eye strategy-management gameplay. But, despite the closer view of our characters, it still feels distinctly characterless. There are no divisive factions to contend with nor truly brutal sacrifices to be made. The act of hammering together a new workbench or butcher’s block in no way disrupts the erection of a scouting balloon station or a steam-powered automaton. Neither does it expand your gameplay experience – you are not forced to make different choices about the new items you build, and no new items you acquire change your strategy or morality.
Gameplay consists of a day period; where you can build and craft – all done through menus and single button-clicks, making the third-person perspective feel superfluous; and a night period, during which you venture out into the ruins of the city around you, evading enemy patrols to scavenge for scraps and supplies. This latter part may have a historical precedent, but it certainly does not feel authentic. When your character returns to the same dark streets every night to find them exactly as they were the night before with the same guards patrolling the same routes, feels extremely artificial and ‘gamey’. This took me out of the moment and broke my immersion.
Probably, the worst aspect of gameplay is supplying the main keep – something done during the day with supplies scavenged and crafted. The keeps defenders have specific needs that must be filled, such as medical supplies, food, and weapons. But, these requirements arrive like orders at a fast-food restaurant – if they lack arrows to fire at the enemy, then when the enemy next attacks, the numerical ‘balance of power’ will shift against you. However, there seems no benefit to oversupplying arrows should that be possible – as soon as the required number of arrows is fulfilled, that requirement vanishes. This robs the player of agency, as it makes it impossible to develop a strategy based on any advantage you may have. The keep either has enough of a thing and the war number goes up, or it does not have enough of a thing, and the war number goes down. There is no extra credit for doing well in one area. Hence no need to attempt anything more than the bare minimum.
Little else of Siege Survival is memorable. It lacks any style of its own, falling into extremely generic dark-fantasy aesthetics and never rising out of them. Some attempt is made at difficult choices, but these are presented and resolved in three consecutive screens of text and have no noticeable lasting effect – you cannot choose the dark path that leads to ritual sacrifice. You can merely rob the old man or help him bury his dead wife before continuing with the rest of your miserable existence.
Siege Survival: Gloria Victis is far from a failure, but, like its own mechanics, it does nothing worthy of extra credit. If you want a low-fantasy game with mediocre crafting, a roster of anonymous characters and rudimentary stealth mechanics, Siege Survival might be the game for you. But there are far more memorable and less tedious experiences out there.
