The stable of Hooded Horse games continue to grow, as the indie strategy/sim publisher has signed to publish Norland.
Developed by Long Jaunt, Norland is a colony sim/colony builder in veins of Rimworld. But this is not only set in the medieval times, it is also rife with blood and death.
The reveal trailer showcases the big battles your colony can partake in, leaving dozens of bloody bodies on the ground. But the violence to silly geometrical shapes that represent people doesn’t end at wars. We see a beheading, a murder as someone is stabbing another in their sleep, and even a plague where corpses lay dead emanating green gas of sorts.
Putting the violence aside, Norland will see you build a noble family and navigate a class-based society. So expect to see crime, salve revolts, even religious conflict to be a something you must tackle. There is a diplomacy system where you can interact with neighbouring kingdoms via trade, alliances, vassalage and, well, war.
So Norland is a bit different from a fellow colony builder also published by Hooded Horse recently, Clanfolk, which recently revamped the hunting system, the most violent interaction available in that peaceful game.
“Partnering with Hooded Horse will allow us to focus on development by relieving us of various non-development tasks such as marketing, localization, trailer creation, and other responsibilities,” Dmitry Glaznev, Norland’s designer and head of Long Jaunt said. “With this support, we aim to deliver a more polished and content-rich game to players in May.”
Thanks to Hooded Horse’s involvement, Norland will also be localised into eight additional languages (Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Turkish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese), on top of the previously offered languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Simplified Chinese).
Norland will launch into Steam Early Access in May 2024.