With tense combat, deep building systems, and a fresh setting, Renown is looking to be a promising twist on the online survival genre.
I recently got the chance to go hands-on with Renown, the upcoming medieval PvP survival game from Melbourne’s RDBK Studios.
The five-person team behind this Kickstarter-funded game hosted a playtest session where we jumped straight into the action, and after being kitted out and split into teams, we were introduced to the game’s core loop: gather, build, and fight for dominance in a grounded medieval sandbox.
Picture Rust or DayZ but swap out assault rifles and grenades for longbows and broadswords. It’s a refreshing take in a genre that’s been dominated by wilderness or post-apocalyptic settings.
The developers clearly want every combat encounter to feel tense and personal. Ranged combat is appropriately tricky to aim, while melee fights are personal and punishing. In situations where you’re just a couple of hits from death, each careful sword swing feels meaningful in a way you don’t get from more spray-and-pray survival shooters.
During the playtest we were dropped into a world pre-stocked with all the armour, weapons, and shelter you would expect to have built up over many hours of gameplay. This made for a much more lighthearted experience than you would expect to have when you get your hands on the game.
"The adrenaline really does kick in. These raids are emotionally intense because everyone spent so much time gathering this gear, building a base and are fighting for their lives" Renown Game Director Jesse Jacobson said.
The visuals are crisp, with stone castles and timber towers standing tall over rolling countryside. Combat animations are solid, that said, some of the basic animations remind you this is still a relatively early build. Crouching, for example, is more of a hard camera cut than a fluid movement. But it’s the kind of jank expected at this stage of development.
We also got to try our hand at building, and while the crafting system didn’t immediately click with me, other players were already throwing together towers while I was fumbling with walls. So, we’ll put that one down to user error. What was clear is that here’s depth here for those who want to get creative with their strongholds.
Renown isn’t trying to reinvent the survival genre, but it is offering fans a fresh coat of chainmail. It’s already delivering something that feels different. There’s work to be done before the early access launch later this year, but if RDBK can tighten up the controls and polish the rough edges, this could be one of the more exciting indie multiplayer games to come out of Australia.
You can wishlist Renown on Steam right now to be notified when the early access release drops.
