In this game, you cut your path on the game map through a hostile forest, and each stop alongs the way puts you in charge of a new settlement. Each settlement will have a different combination of resource types, population races, and the most important, different forest "curses" that become active when you exceed a forest hostility threshold. These thresholds make the game dynamic, as the conditions change during the settlement play-through, in addition to being different between settlements. Building up each settlement is where you will spend 95% of your time, and to be successful you will new to make decisions and balance multiple conflicting priorities. The road to victory is like a tightrope, and if you stray too much to one side of the other, you will fall off. Finding the right equilibrium is the heart of this game: - do you accumulate "victory points" (reputation) rapidly and advance forward, which will raise the hostility of the forest, or will you reduce your pace to buy you time to deal with what awaits along the path? - each "victory point" gives you access to a new building. Each building is useful, but you can't pick them all. Which one will you choose to help you along the way, given the conditions of this particular settlement? - the forest has glades, which hide both rewards and dangers. Some dangers are mild, others can be devastating. Will you risk opening glades? - will you accept a large number of migrants to build your city quickly (which will anger to forest), or do you keep your settlement small to not attract the forest's attention? It is all about making decisions that bring you towards victory while managing the dangers of the forest, and the impatience of your Queen. I forgot to mention the Queen. That tightrope you are carefuly walking on? She will cut it off if you take too long with your settlement, so hurry up along...
