I tend to play The Sims as a storyteller. I like to create unique characters and guide them through their lives in the most entertaining way possible, even if I’m the only one benefiting from that entertainment. However, I’ve always liked to do so while also utilizing the game’s own events to move things along.
It’s collaborative storytelling with the game itself. Rimworld took this concept in a more literal direction. It’s not just a survival game but also one where stories develop. You, as a player, have a hand in how your colonists react to their environment, but it’s the lack of control that defines it as an experience. I’m obviously not the only one who saw the appeal, since Rimworld has since inspired all kinds of games, including Norland.
Norland is Rimworld meets Game of Thrones meets Crusader Kings. It takes the essential colony mechanics from Rimworld while moving it to a fantasy realm where you control a noble family. But something in that equation is confused.
While Norland takes its inspiration from Rimworld, the two aren’t entirely similar. Norland ties in an additional layer of strategy, as well survival city builder mechanics.
You have direct control of the noble family, and you have to keep not only them happy, but also the peasants under them. You need to build up your kingdom’s infrastructure and production, gather wealth, and deal with the other territories around you.
The key ingredient here, however, is the members of your noble house have some autonomy. They have needs that include food, drink (alcohol), sleep, sex, and faith, as well as desires. If you’re not providing for them, they’ll sometimes go and satisfy their needs themselves. Right now, this mostly manifests in one of your house members paying for sex from a peasant, which may result in the birth of a bastard.
There’s also a complex-ish social system. On one hand, it’s straightforward where if you get two characters to spend time with each other, they’ll start to like each other more. But then there’s prejudices and envy. Right now, envy only seems to take the form of wanting more rings than another person, while prejudices seem to be preset involving race. It’s simple enough that you might know what a situation needs to be resolved, but complex enough to where it will sometimes piss you off.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of my characters starting to hate each other. When it works, it’s fun. One situation had a lord and his spouse start butting heads in conversation (which seems random) and that led to a sexless marriage. One cheated on the other, which resulted in a bastard, and that led to attempted murder and a huge rift in the family. That’s awesome.
Less awesome is managing their fucking rings. Their rings are a symbol of status. Except they’re expensive and tough to come by and exchange. I get that the royal coffers wouldn’t always be full enough to make every member of the family feel pretty, but considering the characters get bitchy enough about it to completely stop working and cause a breakdown in your economy which makes everyone, including your peasants, miserable, while you’re waiting for a trader to show up so you can unload enough rutabagas before realizing that you’re unable to buy enough rings for your king to reward them; that’s annoying.
It would be less annoying if everything wasn’t always so pressing. My biggest issue with Norland is that nothing gets to breathe. You are constantly keeping plates spinning: bandits, peasants, cutthroats, other kingdoms, the economy, your family, prisoners, trading, politics, upgrades, production. All the while, you have a finite number of clan members to keep things running, and even balancing their social life, their wants, their jobs, and their needs is a full-time job. This is because, as I mentioned, if they get pissy enough, they’ll just stop working and start fucking the peasants, which causes a bigger breakdown.
I tried to get a successful colony going in Norland four times. I’d never quite fail, but I’d get annoyed enough to start over. Each time, I’d reassess my priorities and go in looking to be more successful, but each time, I’d get hours in before I realized I just wasn’t having fun, even when things were going well. Everything would happen all at once. I’d take my eyes off the political map, and my neighbors would get aggressive. I’d focus on keeping the nobles off of the peasants, and peasants would turn into murderous criminals. And no matter what I prioritized, it came at the expense of something that nobody was willing to go without.
Everything was always happening at once. When things went wrong, it gave no time to recover. It never really rewards you, it just gives you more problems. Norland never gave me a moment to just enjoy what was happening.
Norland is a game with a clear goal and plenty of good ideas. However, it needs a severe change in balancing. Certain systems need to be tweaked, streamlined, or upgraded. It is difficult to know where to start, because the issue is in the interplay between all its different facets. It’s not impossible, but if I’m feeling overwhelmed thinking about it as a player, I can only imagine what it would be like as a developer.
Norland is launching into Early Access, which is clearly where it belongs. There’s a lot of game there right now to the point where you could be fooled into thinking it’s essentially a complete product. However, beyond expanding what is there, Long Jaunt will need to collect and address a lot of player feedback to turn it into an enjoyable experience. For now, I wouldn’t let it into your bed.
