Jon Shafer’s At The Gates brings in some new ideas for the ever niche but still popular 4X strategy genre. Considering that the lead designer (Jon Shafer) was the lead on Civilization V, one of the most acclaimed games in the genre from both a fan and critic standpoint, all signs pointed to this smaller, personal project being one that fans could really be looking forward to.

At The Gates brings in some interesting new ideas to 4X in having something harder to play, deliberately trying to bring on roguelike ideas as you work out what your particular tribe can get up to, and what path you should be following to make sure they survive. As you play and learn to either buddy up with those tribes around you or smite them, beneath the might of your military you get to unlock them for a future playthrough.



Each tribe plays differently, with certain rules being in place and starting areas being favoured over others. You may find yourself in rolling plains with plenty of resources one playthrough, and the next, be stuck in the frozen north trying to fend off the deadly winters as you gradually move your settlement to better-suited areas.

Unlike other 4X games, At the Gates has only one central settlement where your tribe will operate out of, making your initial settle much more of a weighted decision.

And yes, you read right, "settlement" as in singular. Unlike other 4X games, At the Gates has only one central settlement where your tribe will operate out of, making your initial settle much more of a weighted decision. To balance this out however, your settlement can be packed up and moved around until you’ve found a suitable region on the map where you can flourish. With your camp placed once more, you can discover a civilization in the region, locking you down to the area but giving you many new advantages to growing much larger than you could being nomadic.

But how do you go about gathering resources, building structures and military units? Well, At the Gates once again skews the traditional methods of 4X and brings in a system of clans that join your tribe as your fame grows. These clans that join all come with their own traits and personalities. These will determine what kind of profession they would prefer to be placed in, and it can lead to some great buffs if used correctly, or some dire negatives if ignored.



These professions end up in two major camps: those that you send out into the world to perform their duties, and those that stay in your settlement and provide bonuses from there. The units that you send out into the world will generally be your resource gatherers or builders, and your ever-needed military units. With these units going out into the world, you’ll need to make sure to manage their supplies as within your territories they will always be able to restock, but journey too far away and you may soon find your armies wasting away before they can launch their assault.

...one of the major features of At the Gates is a changing season system.

This is particularly felt during the Winter, as one of the major features of At the Gates is a changing season system. Depending on your position on the procedurally generated map and the severity of a given season, you’ll see new threats and opportunities crop up to be dealt with. This effect is wonderfully visualized throughout the map as creeping snow first falls and surrounds mountains before blanketing the land, with rivers freezing over and allowing for quicker, if perhaps slightly more resource taxing, travel.

But while it is cold outside of your walls, you’ll find your workers within your settlement getting by so long as you have a good stockpile to work with. This stockpile can fluctuate greatly, your food especially being hit hard as your farms no longer produce grains in winter, making having a robust economy a must. However, on top of these considerations, one more finds its way in and is especially something you’ll want to keep an eye out in your settlement where many clans will be placed at a time - with that being possible, feuds can start between the clans, as the dirty clan stinks up the place or the more corrupt one brings crime in. These will need to be managed before one clan becomes reluctant to working with your tribe as a whole and can lead to poor output to even having them leave.



This way of producing units and balancing the connections between each brings a much more personal touch to the world that you set out into, and the tribe that you are building with many a-favourite clan popping up and making each playthrough feel different from the last; even more so on top of the aforementioned mechanics.

The look of the game as a whole reminds me very much of the strategic view of Civilization and honestly suits this small production...

Interface-wise, At the Gates brings a lot of charm with its watercolour look, which still manages to display enough information for a given area or resource that you will quickly be able to identify what is going on without relying on the nested popup tips that are easily accessed by scrolling over whatever it is you need information about. The look of the game as a whole reminds me very much of the strategic view of Civilization and honestly suits this small production much better than some other graphics system which could date easily as time moves on. That said, don't look for too much in the way of settings in the options menu to switch things up. I could have really done with a borderless windowed mode to work with while playing and capturing items, but really there is not much that you’d need to change for your experience that it is glaringly missing from here.

With all your ducks in a row and your tribe now thriving, or finally just scraping by, you’ll want to start looking at winning the game. This can be accomplished in one of two ways, both of which involve the ever decaying Roman Empire that will loom large over your playthrough. Once you have found the capital of Eastern or Western Rome, you’ll have two options to pursue. Either take over the enemy from the inside and send your clans to make up the Roman military and seize control there, or send your might to their capital and conquer it in a more straight forward fashion!



Something to consider throughout this all is the lack of a multiplayer built into the game. Many 4X games have healthy multiplayer communities and as such one could have expected it to be put in place here. However, with the nature of the tribes being quite different from each other and asymmetry being something that was leaned into rather than avoided while designing them, the experience and balancing of these abilities for multiplayer would have left At the Gates feeling much more different and almost certainly less of an experience for it.

Overall, At the Gates is a definite core 4X experience that any fan of the genre should at the very least take a look at, if not play through with at least one tribe. It does throw you in at the deep end when you first get going, but then that is the point. If you’re new to 4X or just looking for a smoother journey into the game I would suggest reading up on the developer’s site to get better insights. (We’ll almost certainly see a wiki cropping up in the coming weeks that has best builds for situations and tribes which will be required reading as is the case with many similar games).