Developed by Long Jaunt, Norland is an exciting medieval colony sim. In this game, players get to lead their noble family while going up against several challenges. These include class conflict, political betrayal, religious issues, etc. Norland features a huge city with various characters from all the different classes in the game.
Norland is inspired by other games that feature complex stories like Caesar, Rimworld, and Crusader. Being the ruler of an entire kingdom comes with its own set of challenges. One of which requires you to tend to the needs of citizens present in your kingdom. Each citizen has their own complicated behavioural patterns depending on their social status.
Not only this, but their behaviour can turn out to be quite lethal to you, your family, and your kingdom. However, when ruling a kingdom, you must be cautious of enemies trying to find your weak point. If you’re looking to dive deeper into the world of Norland.
| RRP | $29.99 |
| Price At Electronic First | $20.29 |
Here’s everything you should know about it, including its release date, price, gameplay details, and more!
Norland Release Date
Initially, it was decided that the Norland game would come out on May 16, 2024. However, the developers later revealed that they couldn’t meet this deadline. This was mainly because they realized that the game needed extra testing and debugging before launching it into the world since it wasn’t performing as well as expected despite doing everything they could.
To release a game that works quite well, Long Jaunt decided to push the release date. So now Norland will be coming out on July 18, 2024. In the meantime, the devs opened up the demo version as planned and carried out multiple playtests to see how the players were receiving this game and what some of their feedback was. This was definitely a wise decision from their side!
During the extra time that they got, the game’s creators introduced some brand-new mechanics to Norland and shifted their attention to game optimizations, interface enhancements, and general optimization. In other words, they have been working hard and trying their best to prepare the game for launch by shining and polishing its overall gameplay experience.
Norland Platforms
So far, it has been officially confirmed that the Norland game will be released on PC via Steam on July 18. Unfortunately, there has been no news of the game being released on any other platform so far, including consoles. However, it has happened that games eventually get a console version sometime after their release. So, that’s some consolation for the console players.
Norland Game Lore
Now that the Empire has fallen, many new successor kingdoms have been left standing in its wake. Naturally, each of these kingdoms is left with either a lord or a lady governing it, with each of them busy fighting to get more influence and control over the Empire. These fights can get pretty deadly and usually contain weapons like cloaks, daggers, shields, and swords.
With the help of these weapons, the families battle against each other as well as among themselves. However, apart from this, much greater threats lurk in the shadows of the Empire. The lives of the peasantry are threatened by famines, and noble families fall prey to hedonism and decadence. And, warfare and disunity greatly threaten the entire social order of the kingdom.
The invader-kings were also busy bringing their armies from beyond the border to wreak havoc on the Empire. In this tough situation, players are required to manage their kingdom as well as the members of their noble family to make it grand once again. Norland allows you to write and tell stories of your valor and bravery that’ll be told to children at bedtime!
Norland Trailers
The Norland game was announced two years back in 2022 and received its first reveal trailer. The trailer kicked off with the map of Norland, explaining the history of the empire. Some of the gameplay elements were shown that players would be required to do including managing workshops, building, sewing, paying salaries, and much more. However, that’s not all!
The trailer shifted to show the dark sides of the empire, where people are atoning for their sins or going crazy due to guilt. The video features the chaos of the empire, with executions taking place, fighting, wives murdering their husbands, and two kingdoms going into battle over these issues. This trailer has managed to attract a lot of attention!
You can watch the trailer below!
In addition to the reveal trailer, Long Jaunt released a video a year back, on June 7, 2023. It provides a gameplay overview of the Norland game. The video shared glimpses of the game’s complex story generation, elements related to the kingdom’s citizens, the game’s complicated economy, battle-planning, and the different cultures.
You can watch the trailer below!
On top of this, the developers also released a “Launch Date Announcement” trailer nearly two months ago that featured key aspects of the game. In the end, the video claimed that early access to the Norland game would come out on May 16, 2024. This means that some lucky players are currently busy progressing in the game, building relationships and doing trades!
Norland Gameplay Mechanics
The Norland game features quite a wide range of core gameplay mechanics, such as social interactions, economy, religion, and diplomacy. Once you start the game, you are required to create your own family and pick out the province in which you wish to reside. These provinces are different from each other when it comes to their resources, danger levels, and climate.
Citizens
In addition to your family of lords, the city has dozens of inhabitants from different social classes. Peasants and Slaves only work on the instructions of their lord, which can either be directly given to them or through the chancery system. Every single day in the game is divided into phases, so you can perform different activities on the same day instead of only working.
Once you’re done with your work day, the citizens get time to rest and fulfil their personal needs. Workers receive their wages and then spend those on taverns and markets to buy goods for themselves. Norland also features a variety of moneymaking strategies depending on the skills your citizens possess, so they can be traders or slave-sellers, bookwriters, raiders, and more.
As stated above, the citizens have their unique needs, which means they have their own relationships, health systems, backgrounds, sex drives, and beliefs, which define their entire personality. If the needs of these characters are not met or if they’re not happy or satisfied, then the characters might band together and prove to be a great threat to your noble family.
The family members can also interact with each other by joking around. They can even fall in love, gossip, make friends, insult or support each other. And even killing one another out of hate and anger for each other.
Preventing Your City From Going Into Decline
To ensure that you get advanced production, the lords are required to possess the necessary knowledge that’s contained within the books. You can buy and create books. But if the knowledge within them ends up getting destroyed due to a library fire or an educated lord’s death, then there’s a really high chance that the city might fall into mayhem and decline.
With the introduction of ageing in the game, the lords end up gradually losing their skills and knowledge. The older lords might even develop senile dementia, but they do have a comparatively higher chance of passing the knowledge on to their grandchildren through Wise Conversation (a system through which lords pass knowledge during regular deep conversation).
Players can also construct and upgrade buildings to create efficient and systematic production chains. You can gain the attraction and attention of the migrants with low prices for a wide range of goods on local markets and high wages. You can also use your prisoners to work in dangerous and hazardous industries. However, keep the ecological balance in mind.
In addition, religion also plays a huge role in your city’s social life. Church services fulfil the townsfolk’s spiritual needs. However, poverty and hunger lead to fanaticism, which strengthens the bishop’s power. The religious controversies can pose a threat to your reign of rule. All of this might sound challenging, but there will be a tutorial in the game to teach you everything.
Relationships
The lords in Norland develop complex emotional relationships that usually lead to traumatic situations. However, players have some power over their relationships and can influence them with the help of various interaction options, such as duelling, hunting, spending some time with them, etc. The same applies to your interactions with neighbouring kings on the global map.
Players can either send their kings to establish relationships or invite their neighbours as guests. Peaceful relations help you gain access to trade offers, alliances, and mutual assistance that can turn out to be quite advantageous to you. However, if you’re a fan of ruling by strength, you can force the other kings into Vassalage, which allows you to challenge their authority.
Marriages & Army Building
Marriages between the lords also strengthen relationships and friendship. But think carefully before choosing a bride since children inherit the talents and innate traits of their parents. To resist conflict, the army’s strength is not the only way. Secret actions like kidnapping and inciting rebellions can help you if you’re not a huge fan of waging war against your enemy.
However, if you can do this, then keep in mind that your neighbours can also use the same tactics on you. So, it’s essential to ensure loyalty among your lords and protect important buildings during nighttime. Regardless of this, true protection can only come from a powerful army at the end of the day. Players can bring in peasants and slaves as recruits. However, they will need quite some time to get over their fear of battle and learn how to wield weapons.
On the other hand, you can recruit expensive mercenaries if your economy allows you to, that is. Your success and failure in a battle entirely depend on the equipment you possess. It includes armour selection, soldier morale, and the commanding skills of your lord commander. In Norland, there are seven unique types of weapons. Three different types of armour, one-of-a-kind fighting skills, and the body part damage system. When it comes to combat, the game has you well covered!
On the global map, you can manage events that require you to intervene. For example, natural disasters, blackmail, refugees infested with plague, etc. Only by skillfully utilizing the military, diplomatic, and trading skills of your lords can you resist the global threat that comes up against you in the world of Norland.
Norland Game Price
Someone on the Steam Community page asked the game’s fans a question. It is about to share the info on how much the Norland game’s early access would cost. Fortunately, Long Jaunt entered the game themselves and asked the players if $27 was okay for them since that’s how much they considered keeping it. However, most of the community was satisfied with this price range.
Unfortunately, the developers haven’t confirmed the official Norland game price yet. It seems that it’ll be disclosed closer to the launch date only. Learn more about the new game releases with all the details only on EF blog. We recently revealed the release dates and info of Once Human and Slay the Spire 2. All information shared here is official and cross-checked before posting. So that you get only authentic news and updates. If you want to get your hands on this exciting strategy, medieval kingdom sim, you can purchase the Norland game through the Electronic First site as soon as the game releases. Furthermore, this site is also fairly easy to navigate.