Going Medieval styles itself as a sandbox base builder in the wilderness of the mid 11th century. Design a fortress and accompanying town while managing the needs of your named settlers and fending off frequent raids and events.
Anyone who’s played RimWorld will find the mechanics of Going Medieval very familiar. We can draft our settlers in times of need, we assign jobs in order of priority, and the population grows through world events instead of procreation.
The UI is clean and informative; having the populace as a list down the left of the screen with their equipped armor, weapon, and current task makes for smooth operation of the town. The villagers operate off a schedule, collect resources, and have specific personality traits that lend themselves to different tasks. They are also prenamed and live long enough for you to become attached, which makes me genuinely nervous and fearful during raids and encourages me to equip the villagers with weapons and armor, while building defences in the hopes of giving ‘em the edge in battle.
Building is really simple in this game, to the point where even I could figure out roofs. The map comes in layers, encouraging below ground storage for food and perishables, plus mining for limestone and clay to build better fortifications. To research better tech, your villagers can write books at the research table in their downtime to stockpile the chronicles necessary for higher learning.
This game carries the same vibe as all the management games from my youth. I have been happily wiling away hours designing my little fortress town and upgrading my settler’s lives. In complete honesty, it took me much longer to work on this review than the others, because I kept… playing the game. I’m not sure if I’m just a little nostalgic this week, but Going Medieval hits that spot. Having recently gone into Early Access, this game is surprisingly complete though it warns to watch for issues. In fact, it’s more put together than some full release games I’ve played.
The planned future updates promise even more exciting features that I was actually writing into this review as suggestions, but they’ve beaten me to it. Animal husbandry, mounted siege weaponry, shelves and weapon racks, plus a bunch of quality of life improvements which I genuinely feel will improve the game even further.
What I would like to see in an update would be the ability to turn off certain notifications such as the idle settler bell. It goes off a lot and spooks me every time, and the ability to see what kind of temperature it is inside a room. I never knew if my storage rooms were cold enough until meat started spoiling.
One of my review notes for Going Medieval simply reads “this is really enjoyable.” The management style, bright artistic vibes, and freedom of building spoke to me on a nostalgic level that keeps me coming back to my little settlement with aims of building a library, or a blacksmith, or a grand dining hall. Really enjoyed this title and can't wait for full release.
