You know, with there being so many games set in ancient Rome, most of them being strategy games, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a pixel art game with that setting. I bring this up because Romestead, a pixel art game with that exact setting, just got announced at the Future Games Show. From the offset it looks a little bit Stardew Valley, a little bit Terraria, and according to the publisher behind it Three Friends themselves, the latter is in fact a source of inspiration, alongside SNES classic The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Described as a survival town-builder, Romestead lets you rebuild civilisation from ruin as a Roman leader (which as a concept considering publisher Three Friends is made up of former Valheim and Minecraft devs). That involves things like putting your people to work by farming crops, smithing weapons, rounding up resources, all things you appear to be able to do yourself too, so I imagine you can’t be tyrant right from the get go, as was typical of many Romans back in the day.
There’s a worship system where you can pray to a bunch of Roman gods to unlock various buildings, upgrades, technologies, all of which I find amusing very conceptually. “You have prayed enough to me so I give you the gift of a slightly bigger house” is how I imagine to play out, which tickles me in a “aren’t video games so quaint?” kind of way.
That Zelda element comes in through dungeons that you can explore and bosses you can face off against, and a big ole world to explore too. And to boot you don’t have to do it alone as there’s multiplayer co-op too.
Romestead doesn’t currently have a release date, but it is planned for an early access release. If this all takes your fancy, then you can wishlist the game on Steam right here.