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After taking a few weeks off, developer Oxide Games is once again offering a new video dev diary for its upcoming grand strategy game Ara: History Untold. This time, the dev diary’s host Steven Bell is chatting with Oxide’s Creative Director Brian Wade.
The subject of city management in the game comes up and Wade says that in order to get started, its important in his eyes that you get your hands on resources:
Usually, I worry about just getting the economy rolling, getting enough of the primary resources so that I don’t have to worry about them much later. They’re always going to be a problem but you need enough to get started and that means getting enough wood, stone, food, and money to make sure that you can do the rest of the things you want to do in the game.
Later on in the video, Wade talks about how to keep your city’s citizens happy in the game by making some improvements. One is building an Inn and making sure there’s enough beer:
Yes I know that this was going on a theme here but in Ara our beer will make people happy if consumed . . , It is a genre convention.
As cities get bigger it will become harder to keep its citizens happy, even with beer.
The video dev diary also goes into more of the technological advancements that players can unlock as they go through history. In the later parts of the game, technology elements will be introduced but players may have to deal with pollution as well.
Wade says players could be successful by making one mega-city in the game but his own choice would be to spread their influence to other parts of the world. As players become more technologically advanced, they can also unlock different government types with their own bonuses.
Ara: History Untold is currently set for release on the PC sometime in 2024 via Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios. You can join the Ara Insider Program right now to play pre-release builds for the game. In fact, last week, Oxide announced that a new technical alpha test is slated to begin “soon” and you can learn more about how to participate on the game’s Steam page.
