Operation: Vicus

Operation: Vicus is a village-management game in which you rule a settlement, make decisions that affect your relationship with its inhabitants and defend it from beasts. You investigate strange notes to learn where they come from, what they mean and what the village is about. Your choices can strengthen or weaken villagers’ relationships with you, and some decisions may have lasting consequences.

Build your village

Expand the village to house more inhabitants and unlock research in your laboratory, including weapons and buildings. Mines produce ores for the blacksmith to process, while the forester supplies wood. These resources can go toward houses, attractions, barracks and defensive guns. Laboratory research can improve buildings, make them more robust or unlock better buildings for the village.

Manage your inhabitants

You can set each villager’s daily schedule: make them work longer to increase production, give them more free time or let them decide how to spend their time. Their individual moods contribute to the village’s overall satisfaction, so you need to monitor both. When villagers are unhappy, the Satisfaction menu or information from individual citizens can help you identify and address the causes. Neglecting their feelings can reduce production and lead to other problems.

Defend your village

Insidious beasts threaten to destroy the village, so you train troops and lead them into battle. Upgraded barracks provide better, stronger troops, and you choose whether to field more weaker soldiers or fewer stronger ones. You can focus on close combat, ranged attacks or both, then direct your troops’ targets during battle and choose how many soldiers pursue each target. Barracks and guns help defend the settlement.

Story and atmosphere

As you uncover the story behind the strange notes, you make difficult decisions and piece together what the village is about. The game uses a low-poly art style, cartoon-like animations and music that changes to fit the situation, with relaxed morning and mysterious evening atmospheres.

Some features are planned but not yet implemented.