I saw Ertugrul of Ulukayin advertised on Facebook and the setting piqued my interest, even if I'm not sure how to pronounce it's name. It was a low budget game set in medieval Turkey. It was on sale recently, so I decided to pick it up.

I feel safe saying the developers of this game are fans of the RPG era of Assassin's Creed. I found a lot of the gameplay felt very familiar, especially in combat. Your attack buttons are on the right shoulder buttons, there's the special attacks you unlock and your tools are on the directional pad. When you fight enemies they have color coded attacks you have to parry, dodge, or counter. I did turn the difficulty down because, while the combat tries to be Assassin's Creed, it is a bit clunky. Some of it may be my lack of skill, but it also feels like the controls aren't as responsive as they need to be for the reaction times they are expecting from you. Enemies also have a habit of mobbing you.

You also have an Eagle Vision, called “Wolf Sense” here. You can upgrade your character with skill points and you can upgrade the houses in your village too, like in AC: Valhalla. I know those aren't exclusive to the AC RPG games, but it did make me feel like I was playing someone's attempt at one. There's also a little bit of Red Dead Redemption in there too, in how you have to care for your horse and a few other sort of immersive simulation type moments. There's a crafting system where you forage for items and use them to make arrows and health potions. The levels are structured in a fairly linear fashion. There's no open world like in Assassin's Creed, instead you explore certain areas, following either an NPC or a trail of white paint. Some of these things do feel a bit performative in nature, like the horse care stuff is nice, but I never felt it really effected the gameplay.

The linear levels and the general graphics quality made this game feel like it was a forgotten title from the PS3 era. The characters look good, but by no means modern. The landscapes also don't look the most textured, but they do have detail. The village Ertugrul lives in looks really impressive in the big wide shots showing it off. And the highest point of the game for me is the music. The developers didn't skimp here. It's a lot of throat singing and drums indicative of the steppes people, and a genre of music I do enjoy.

So, this game tells the story of Ertugrul & his people. Now, I am not well versed in Turkish history, but I was inspired to look up a little bit about this guy because of this game. From what I can tell, Ertugrul is a semi-historical hero of Turkey, in the vein of El Cid or Roland. In that he was real, but his life has some embellishments. In my quick glance, he seems to be mostly known for being the father of Osman who would be the man that would found the Ottoman Empire. That's not real present here in this game. You are instead tasked with saving your brother who was captured when Mongols raided your village. He had this secret box too that your family has guarded for years, and your father, the leader of the village, decides it's time to pull up stakes and head for greener pastures away from the Mongolians. You also learn that the local Mongolians were working for a secret Order, again making this feel a bit like someone's AC fan game. I don't necessarily hate that though, because I've always said the AC games have that ability to explore any time period, and early Turkish history is a unique one you don't see covered in games.

I realize that maybe I wasn't the intended audience for this game, but I do wish the story did a little more world building to help lay out everyone's relations to each other. I thought the village's militia commander was my father for awhile, and our warriors refer to each other as 'brother' but I don't know which are actual brothers vs. just battle brothers. I also don't know how the power structure works in this village. A lot of my playtime was figuring out who everyone was to everyone else. There are some codex pages that may explain all of this in detail, but I mostly skimmed through them.

You do get a sense of each of the main characters' personality. You switch between three player characters, Ertugrul who is the headstrong young man who will be the future leader of his people, Turgal, the big brute with a jolly attitude, and Meryem, the sarcastic girl whose good with a bow. It's a classic trio, Turgal & Meryem have some friendly banter and keep Ertugrul grounded. The whole game is in Turkish, you can chose English, but the game recommends using subs instead of dubs. I also always forget how... frank, people from other parts of the world can be. The characters are very blunt when they speak, like some of the dialogue is very close to “Leave us woman, the men must speak”. It could be a cultural thing, or it could be intentional because this is a historical setting filled with people that live hard lives.

This game is in early access, which did account for some of the small bugs I noticed, none were really game breaking. They do need to work on the horse following mechanics. NPCs that follow you on horse seem to bumble into you a lot. Early access also means the game is currently incomplete, with only the first two chapters out, which evens out to about 4 hours of gameplay, which definitely isn't worth the current asking price, but the game does seem to have big ambitions, so I do hope to see this game come to complete fruition.

That is one thing I have to give credit to the developers for. It's always a gamble when it comes to these low budget games. Ertugrul does have the benefit of not having the word 'simulator' in it's title. The developers are going for it. There's cutscenes that aren't just conversation shots, including a sweeping shot that follows an eagle through the village and a couple slow-mos where we follow an arrow to it's target. The characters have a range of animations, including in cutscenes, Ertugrul feels very much like it's trying to be a real game vs a time killer like “Car Wash Manager Simulator”.

All in all, Ertugrul of Ulukayin is a fun little game. In it's current early access state I don't think it's worth the price they're charging, even at the sale I bought it at, but it's a game with ambition. Compared to another early access game I played Saloon Simulator, I actually expect Ertugrul to eventually be fully released. Even with my short time with the game, I enjoyed getting to explore a piece of a history from a culture I wasn't familiar with. While the story was stark standard, it did inspire me to look up the history behind it. If you are someone who likes unique historical settings or wants to try out a low-budget Assassin's Creed, I would recommend this game, but only at the deepest of sales.