Bastide is a city-building strategy game based in the 13th century. Your role is to guide some peasants to help them prosper and thrive, turning their measly old village into a fortified town. You can assign them to collect food and resources, which you can use to construct buildings.
Some technical upgrades have been implemented in the recently released Update 0.4.0. First, the game now uses Unreal Engine 5, giving you much more realistic graphics than before. This is quite evident when you look at the weather visuals such as rain and snow. Additionally, the game now utilizes DirectX 12, so those on Windows 10 and Windows 11 can take full advantage of improved CPU utilization and performance brought by the latest API from Microsoft.
The developers have also made some fundamental changes in Bastide. For one, the Happiness stat now affects work speed. Furthermore, Happiness is now more controllable and is affected by certain factors, including starvation, illness, freezing, and thirst. The animal population has also increased in Update 0.4.0 to make food more readily available.
- Procedural maps have been removed and will most likely return in the future.
- Due to the old maps not being available, all past saves are invalid and won't be displayed.
- New main menu with scenery and changing weather.
- Added walking noises for people and animals; will only work when on one speed.
- Reduced illness frequency.
- Resource list can be moved and resized.
- Resources at the top can now be shrunk down to food, wood, stone, lumber, and cut stone.
- People will no longer instantly leave at 0% happiness. Instead, they will stick around a bit longer, and if they still feel the same way, they will go.
- Firewood is now more necessary and will be used at slightly higher temperatures.
- Camera rotation for q and e has been smoothed. The same goes for building rotation.
- The camera angle is currently fixed for performance reasons and will slightly change while zooming in and out. This has increased performance by 3x. It may be removed when better optimized.
- Much harsher building requirements. Flatter land is required for construction.
- Buildings no longer will curve to the ground they are on.
- Simplified building preview system.
- Enemy attacks are now spawned so as not to have 20 to 30 enemies affecting performance at all times.
- Added larger forests.
- Added global control for button noises.
- Reduced the rate new families join.
After this patch, the update cadence for the game may slow down. There might still be an update released every week, though every three to four weeks is more realistic considering that the developers will now focus on significant performance reworks, re-implementation of procedural maps, and changes to the game mechanics.
Bastide Update 0.4.0 is available on PC.
