Welcome Ladies and Villeins to your regularly scheduled, bi-weekly Under The Yoke Devlog.
Last week we took a look into death in the Middle Ages so it only seems fair that we take a look at birth this week. We also have a little special announcement and the end of this week’s blog so be sure to read through (or skip to the end, I can’t tell).
In History
So, you got yourself knocked-up. As with all things in the Middle Ages, there were a variety of myths afforded to would be and expecting Mothers. From eating or not eating certain things to certain conception techniques for ensuring the baby is a boy or a girl. All advice which might not sound so foreign to modern women.
Pregnancy in general was a heck of a thing in the medieval period, with life in the fields and a lack of any real medicine the possibility of a miscarriage was high. Even for those who made it to birth the mortality rate for the Mother and the Child were both very high. It was important then that the child was Christened right away to ensure their entrance into Heaven.
For those who did survive there was precious little time to enjoy childhood. Children would begin helping with farm and household responsibilities as soon as they could walk while Mothers would be expected to do the same after the birth.
In Under The Yoke
For the first time in an Under The Yoke blog I have to say, we have deviated from History pretty significantly. (So far).
Historical pregnancy was so dangerous that 1 in 3 women never made it past their child-bearing years. Though there were plenty of other contributing factors the truth of it is, pregnancy and child birth were just really goddamn dangerous. Without the ability to mitigate these dangers, Under The Yoke turns into a game of like rather than a medieval life-sim as female characters are purged frequently and games die from a lack of male heir within 2 generations.
Now this doesn’t mean we won’t try and model the dangers of pregnancy and it doesn’t mean we won’t offer a realistic setting that turns your game into a D-Day with pregnant women. Simply, by default the game will not 1:1 model infant mortality, it just wouldn’t be fun.
Righto, who would have thought the birth blog would be more depressing than the death blog?
To the special announcement!
As you may have noticed with our recent shorter articles on more nebulous subjects like “death”, “birth” (perhaps life next?) we have reached a development stage that is more focused on balancing and polishing than it is adding new features. Under The Yoke is by no means finished, we still have a lot of balancing and polishing to do, a few new features and a ton of events, but the game is now basically playable, meaning the long hard road does have an off ramp.
If you’d like to be with us on that off ramp and maybe even get to play our little medieval life-sim early, subscribe using the form below.