History can be fun with Citadelum

Earlier this month, we had the pleasure of catching up with David Martinez, Head of Marketing at Abylight Studios in Barcelona. Around a year ago (how the time flies) we spoke to the Abylight team about an - as of then - untitled god game/city builder they were working on.

At this year's Gamescom, we got an in-depth look at the immense progress of that game, which the team has called Citadelum. It centres around resource management, construction, and combat in true god-simulator fashion, but the Ancient Roman theming of Abylight's game has a lot more truth and substance to it than you might expect.

I'm going to cover the work the team have put into the history behind the game, but for a more in-depth dive you can watch the full interview here:

Martinez said: "Right now the game is almost finished, we are polishing, so we are announcing here at Gamescom - we have playable battles and you will be able to play them in a prologue we are releasing very soon.

"At the end of August everyone will be able to play this prologue with two complete captures of the game, of the campaign, and you will be able to experiment with new mechanics, to do the core city building game, and also to play for the first time battles."

As for their theming and the game's subject matter, the team knew quite early on that they wanted it to be Roman in some capacity, but as they worked on the project it became something much closer to fact than fantasy (albeit there are still gods strutting around in Citadelum).

Martinez said: "We decided to have Rome, why don't we enjoy Rome? And the only way to enjoy Rome is having the more realistic buildings and characters you can, and also the gods, we imagined the gods as Romans did, so they look like people, giant people, but people anyway.

"And yeah, we decided to go for a realistic approach. So what we did is we have a campaign which is based on true facts, which is following the ascent of Augustus to emperor, and you will be able to play in different places - in Hispania, in Peninsula Italica, in Egypt - and we decided, okay, if we are gonna have battles and we are gonna have gladiators and chariot races, we're gonna need blood.

"So yeah, this is not a game rated for everyone, but still we think this is a true Roman city building experience."

It wasn't a simple task either, with the Abylight team being fully dedicated to accuracy with Citadelum.

Martinez added: "We wanted to find something that fit a game, so we start after the death of Julius Caesar, and then you are following Augustus' life until he became emperor.

"We wanted to have in the game something like they have, for instance, in Band of Brothers, in which you follow a unit and you can see the evolution of the world, but as this is a game about city building, we have to find, we had to find where those settlements were founded and built.

"So yeah, finally what we had to do is study a lot, and after searching through history books and talking to experts, we found this history about Augustus was that was adding variety enough to the game, and also, you know, the feeling of this progression."

You can try out the demo for Citadelum now, and the game is planned for a release this year around the end of this month/during October. Wishlist now via Steam.