Gamescom 2018: The Settlers are back

A full 25 years after its first launch, The Settlers are set to come back in style thanks to Ubisoft in Fall 2019.

Announced during Gamescom 2018, I got a chance to get a close look at the new Settlers game being developed by Blue Byte on Ubisoft’s amazing Snowdrop Engine which powered The Division, for those of familiar with the game. The engine marks a big upgrade and a lot of potential for the upcoming title.

The game will start off with your Settlers arriving on the shore of an uncharted island and then setting up a small camp with some limited resources. As you progress you will have to not only build up your city infrastructure but also resource gathering buildings to support your economy and expansion. Basic resources that were showed off included bushes with berries, trees for wood, fishing near water bodies and of course metal during later stages of the game.

Territorial expansion works with military units this time around and of course, is the Ultimate goal of the game. To start you must build a military building near your border and assign units to it, and slowly they will start acquiring more territorial control in that general area. While this is pretty much on autopilot, you will, of course, have to manage your empires expansion with resources and morale.

You’ll have to start by connecting all your buildings by roads to improve efficiency by speeding up your units. It helps to have most places that store raw materials and food in the centre so that they are easily accessible to most of your other buildings. After a while, you will need to build a house, but this time these aren’t to house your settlers, but rather to feed them/. Assigning units to Houses makes them prepare food and drop it off at your various resource collection buildings where you will see your collectors take occasional breaks to eat and get their spirits back up before work!

Now details beyond basic gameplay are a little scarce at this point considering the game has just been announced, but after spending a little time with the developers and an early build of the game the signs look promising. Particularly in terms of scale and what’s possible; the early build had over 3000 settlers going about their chores and the game was running at a stable near 60 FPS and this is before we even run into other large players in the game and of course without combat.

Overall, I’m very excited about The Settlers making a return especially on a new engine that will not only help it look good but also expand on the scale of what was possible a decade ago! It seems there’s finally something for strategy fans to keep an eye out for!

— Ishaan Arya