I was able to check out Pioneers of Pagonia at PAX East and I have to say, it’s an interesting city builder. I’m not usually a fan of city builder type games but Pioneers of Pagonia has a different feel to it.
You set out on your journey to explore the vast locations of Pagonia. If you find it, you can settle on it. If I want to build on a mountainside, I have to send townsfolk to said mountain to explore. You will see all the people I send to explore crossing the map, which is pretty cool.
If I decide to build something, you will see all the builders I sent to build walking over with supplies for building. Usually in city builders like this, you don’t always see what’s going on but that isn’t the case it Pioneers of Pagonia. You will be able to see everything and basically have a say in everything that goes on.
Another interesting feature is that you when you want to expand your land, you will have to actually find new people out in the wild. You will have to get them to join your town/settlement and in turn will grow your city. There’s a fog strewn about and it’s up to us to explore it. Expanding your settlement will push the fog back and in turn give more locations to check. Be careful though because who knows what you’ll find. You might find werewolves or ghosts out there and you will need to craft someway to take care of them. Werewolves hate silver so you will have to go out of your way to craft silver to take care of the pesky werewolves.
I think it’s really neat that I can do whatever I want in my locations and build just about anything. If I want to make a small town with many roads going in and out, I can do that. If I want to destroy the forest and have tons of wood for supplies and then rebuild the forest, I can do that. It’s neat that I can go at my own pace as well while I build my settlement. Usually in games like this, you can feel overwhelmed or rushed and I didn’t feel like that during my demo play session.
There are plenty of buildings that you can build. It’s these buildings that will help you build up your economy and trade routes. Another interesting take is that you will have to protect your settlement from just about anything. You might get random animal hordes coming into town to make a mess or steal food. You might get criminals breaking into town and messing around with everything. I’m curious as to just how far the game will take mythical creatures causing problems for your settlement. We already know about werewolves but what else could there be? Could we be dealing with sea monsters or vampires or something like that?
Another thing I really like about Pioneers of Pagonia is that is feels like you have a purpose to performing these tasks for your settlers. In other city builders like this, you’re only building up the city to look good. Here, you’re building up the locations, looking for new people to expand with and defeat monsters along the way. It’s a city builder and RPG all in one neat little package.
Pioneers of Pagonia is an interesting take on the city builder genre. It adds plenty to the formula that makes it feel different and unique. I have to say any game that has werewolves, ghosts, and bandits and gives me freedom to build almost anything is alright in my book!