A wise city planner knows how to harness the world around them. Erect massive dams and aqueducts to control the flow of water as you reshape the land into artificial watersheds and reservoirs. Seek distant resource deposits and build infrastructure to transport raw materials and processed goods across massive stretches of untamed territory. Will you strike a delicate balance between the growing urban sprawl of your city and the risks of rapid expansion? Or will your hubris risk the wrath of the gods and nature itself?
Contend with a growing list of needs and desires as more people flock to your city – from pottery and wine, to bread and games, to education and faith – it is your responsibility to keep the people happy and safe. Educate them as scholars and gladiators, train them as thespians and warriors, and guide them through life as they spend their days toiling, and their nights enjoying the fruits of their labor.
Your advisors and senators will guide you through countless concerns as they arise. From matters of taxation to hostile invasions, your authority allows you to establish edicts and pursue technological advancements for the benefit of your burgeoning city. But do not forget the powers that stand above you – build grand temples to the gods to avoid their wrath and ensure the continued prosperity of Nova Roma.
Nova Roma explores the cultural, political, and military trials of the era. Take charge of your small Roman town and grow it into a bustling metropolis that will stand the test of time!
Hey Everyone,\n\nFirst off, thanks for all your feedback on the Nova Roma demo! It\'s been great to see the cities everyone\'s creating, and we\'ve definitely been impressed and surprised with the things you\'re all doing with the dams and aqueducts! \n\nGiven the response to the demo, we are going to push our launch date back a couple more months. The new date will be March 26th, 2026. Using your feedback we\'ve updated the demo with lots of tuning, fixes, and recently we added rain, flooding, and droughts. We\'ll continue to update the demo - we\'re sort of thinking of it as a \'proto-early access\'.\n\nIt\'s disappointing to have to wait even longer and we\'re sorry about that! We want to make sure everything is polished and we want to get in as much of your feedback as possible before release. Until then we hope you enjoy the demo and keep the feedback coming!\n\nUntil next time,
- Pete, Michael, & Sam
\n[dynamiclink href=\"https://store.steampowered.com/app/2426560/Nova_Roma_Demo/\"][/dynamiclink]
Hi everyone,
We\'re excited to announce the demo for Nova Roma is now available on Steam! We\'ve been working on this game for quite a while and we\'re happy to finally be able to share a preview of it with you all.
Here\'s a quick trailer for the demo:
You\'ll get to play with the early buildings and production chains, get a little taste of combat/defense, and interact with some of the gods. You\'ll also get to experiment with the dynamic water system - both by making aqueducts and by constructing (and destructing if you want to get crazy) dams and reservoirs.
We Want Your Feedback!
[hr][/hr]Of course, the game isn\'t done yet and there\'s still plenty we\'ll be working on and improving as we get closer to the Early Access launch. If you have any feedback or encounter any bugs while trying out the demo we want to know! Come chat directly with us in Discord or post on the Steam forums . You can also join r/NovaRomaGame on reddit.
Until next time!
- Pete, Michael, and Sam [dynamiclink href=\"https://store.steampowered.com/app/2426560/Nova_Roma_Demo/\"][/dynamiclink]
Hi everyone,\n\nWe\'re excited to announce that Nova Roma has an official Early Access release date: January 22, 2026.
We had originally hoped to release this year, but it turns out the three of us need some extra time to polish the game and make our Early Access launch as smooth as possible. It\'s definitely disappointing to have to wait longer, but we do have some good news: you\'ll be able to try the game this year! We will be releasing a public demo for Nova Roma on December 5.
We\'re excited to be getting closer to release (even if it\'s a bit farther out than we first hoped). In the meantime, check out our new launch date trailer:
\n\n \nWhile we keep working toward Early Access release, come chat with us on Discord or in our Steam forums. You can also read more about how development has been going in our recent development updates. \n\n[dynamiclink href=\"https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2426530/view/505089031138182714\"][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink href=\"https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2426530/view/512954475614306567\"][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink href=\"https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2426530/view/4324102829992213855\"][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink href=\"https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2426530/view/4216006291773130588\"][/dynamiclink]\nUntil next time! - Pete, Michael, and Sam
Hi Everyone!
Weve put a full day/night cycle in Nova Roma, and it has an important gameplay effect on your citizens\' lives. All buildings begin and end work at different times: workers at shops and theaters sleep in a bit but work later, while bakers will have to get up very early.
When work ends, citizens need to walk home each night and get some sleep. Your city\'s design affects the length of their trip to and from work. If they cant make it home in time theyll get tired.Below, these workers have a job at a fishing hut very far from their home so they\'re not able to get enough rest:
\n[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/44238280/750cbd55fd8af58f1ea6df2c2779ddaa4ae988e8.gif\"][/img]
If they spend too long walking to work, the productivity at that building will suffer. You can see this split on the \'Time Working\' vs \'Time Commuting\' bar in the UI. Here we can see workers are spending the great majority of their time walking to work instead of actually fishing. This is an important tool to diagnose production issues in your city, and of course the building itself will notify you of an issue using the thought bubble system:
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/44238280/f1ec1f62a1293733ccc8766c5d3a13f5de6cd5f1.png\"][/img]
To fix this commute issue, youll need to either improve your road networks so they can get to work faster by building better roads or you can build closer housing. Workers with bad commutes will automatically try to move closer to their work if there is available housing, so in this case its as simple as building some housing closer to the fishing huts.
\n[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/44238280/993475fc87e80f1ee6dfe3a67dcb1d3ac3f4b1fb.gif\"][/img]
\n
The day night cycle is also a fun way to simulate patterns of daily life and add more liveliness to your city. When folks are done with work theyll visit a theater or shop in their idle time, before going to bed.
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/44238280/908db29dc8684f3e861d18dde1796108f290c558.gif\"][/img]
We didnt want just a cosmetic change for day and night - were hoping these commute time mechanics add a little extra depth to your citys layout and design.
\n[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/44238280/ac5d5c3946d7b9ee4a589c73ddfd154b2f9b5918.gif\"][/img]
Until next time!
Hi Everyone,
We wanted to give another quick update on some of the cool things coming in Nova Roma, mainly how the water and terrain system affects soil fertility.
Crops need fertile soil to grow, and the more fertile the better the yield. Soil fertility is affected by a number of factors, but primarily it depends on proximity to fresh water. As the water flows through, the nearby soil becomes more fertile
Since the water is fully dynamic, this means you can change this if you can divert the flow of water. And of course, you can! Previously weve shown how you can build dams to change the course of rivers, but we are adding a feature that lets you modify the terrain, and thus the flow of water however you wish.
You can command your citizens to begin big or small earth moving projects. You can designate areas of the ground to be leveled out, dug into, or raised up.
When we bring all these features together, your citizens can dig out channels under your direction to allow water to flow through, quite literally irrigating the land:
Were looking forward to seeing all the amazing stuff youll come up with!
Until next time!
-Pete, Michael, & Sam
Hi Everyone!
Weve always found ancient Rome fascinating, especially the daily life and housing. In first hand accounts, original texts, and letters you can find they were very much like us. They had similar complaints about their apartment being too noisy, the roof leaking, or neglectful landlords.
There were a wide range of housing types in ancient Rome, from small homes to towering apartment buildings. Were taking heavy inspiration from actual ruins and research to implement housing in Nova Roma.
Housing Types
So far, were supporting a few different housing types:- small houses
- apartments (insula)
- larger houses (domus)
The small houses operate much like youd expect, you just need to satisfy their basic needs. The apartments and larger homes will need access to more resources and services beyond the basics, including access to aqueduct supplied water. Theyll also provide more tax revenue.
Mixed-Use Buildings
One really interesting thing about ancient Rome was that on the ground floor of apartment buildings (and some domus style houses) there were shop fronts individuals could rent out. This mixed-use type building was very much like the kind you find in cities today.
We want to represent this in Nova Roma so weve implemented a new system in which you can make mixed use buildings. Weve set up the apartment buildings with special slots on their ground floor available for shop placement.
Shops (Tabernae)
Youll be able to select different shop types to place inside these ground floor slots, everything from food courts to barbers. The apartment and shops are independent buildings. The shopkeepers may or may not live at the apartment where their shop is located, and theyll need to go out and collect the resources they need to run their business.
Weve taken a lot of inspiration from the historical research on the types of businesses that populated these ground floor areas (you can read more about that history here ). More historically inspired shop types will be coming later! On that note, a little disclaimer that we are not historians so some things may end up a bit different than how they actually were in ancient Rome. As game designers, were trying our best to balance the history with compelling gameplay.
Until next time!
-Pete, Michael, & Sam
Hi Everyone!
Weve been working away on all aspects of Nova Roma, from the internal systems, map generation, water mechanics, and more. Last blog post we highlighted the dynamic, physically simulated water system. Today we want to show how that impacts your city.
Citizens living in higher end homes will need access to water, and water is also required to keep public toilets flowing and bathhouses operating. Youll need to build dams to create reservoirs, then bring that water via aqueducts to town.
Because the water system is dynamic, building a dam has some challenges. How do you make sure your dam will keep the water where you want it? We wouldnt want you to spend a lot of time working on a dam only to accidentally flood your city. To solve this problem, Michael has been working on a special Dam Planning Mode.
It allows you to add and remove dam blocks and runs the water simulation in a preview mode so you can see how the water will respond based on the design of your dam. You can adjust how far into the future you want to see the water simulated.
Here Ive set up a poorly designed dam, but the dam planning mode lets me know the dangers of my design. Buildings that would be hit and damaged by flooding water are highlighted red.
Now Ive corrected it and I can see the water will be directed away from my town. When youre happy with everything you can start your dam project and things should work just as youve planned. This allows you to build large dam projects without the fear of accidentally flooding your town.
To get the water to our citizens, we need to add a water tap. The water tap is a building that draws water from the adjacent dam and allows sediment to fall to the bottom. Well also need a water tower which will supply water to nearby houses and buildings. We connect these together with an aqueduct and since everything is physical, the aqueducts must run downhill.
You can also create more complex water networks using reservoir-like Water Splitters.
Each building in the system has information on the flow rate of the water coming in and going out. Houses, apartments, bathhouses, and more all draw from the flow of water so youll need to make sure you are piping enough in to keep everyone happy.
Well of course be iterating and polishing this further as we approach release. Our goal is that it should be a fun challenge to manage dams and water infrastructure to keep your city supplied with water as it grows larger and more dense.
Until next time,
-Pete, Michael, & Sam
Hi everyone! Nova Roma and other games published by Hooded Horse are all featured at the Hooded Horse Publisher Sale. Come check it out!
Hooded Horse Strategy Publisher Sale
Hi everyone!
We wanted to give you a quick update on some of the things weve been working on for Nova Roma.
3D Terrain
One of the biggest requests from our previous game Kingdoms and Castles was for terrain with hills and mountains. For Nova Roma, Sam and I have been reworking the map generation algorithms and terrain engine from the ground up (heh heh). We can now fully support 3D terrain (which you may have seen from the trailer). Were working hard to get interesting cliffs, beaches, and mountain features. None of this is final and theres still improvements to be made, but heres a preview of the direction were going with the maps:
Water SImulation
The 3D terrain isnt just for aesthetics and show, itll factor directly into the gameplay as well. Michaels been working on writing a fluid simulation that interacts physically with the 3D terrain. Water starts near mountains and flows through forests and hills down to the ocean.
Because the system is fully dynamic its possible for you as the player to affect the flow of the water. Heres an example of cutting a new channel for a river with our terrain editing tools. Changing the terrain dynamically affects how the water pools up and moves across the land.
Well be tying this directly into the gameplay mechanics. Youll be able to command your citizens to undertake huge projects to change the terrain to alter the course of rivers, build reservoirs and dams, and supply water to your city with aqueducts. Well have more to show on that soon. Theres still plenty of polish to do, but were very excited about the new possibilities of the 3D terrain and fluid system!
Until next time,
Pete, Michael, and Sam
Nova Roma has been announced at the PC Gaming Show!
Thank you to everyone checking out the game, we'll have more to share soon.
Minimum Setup
- OS: Ubuntu 14.10 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo. 2.0GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+. 2.5GHzMemory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 256MB or AMD Radeon HD 5670 256MB or Intel HD Graphics 4600
- Storage: 1 GB available space
Recommended Setup
- OS: Ubuntu 14.10 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel Core i5-3470. 2.7GHz or AMD FX-6300. 3.2GhzMemory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660. 1GB or AMD Radeon HD 7870. 1GB
- Storage: 1 GB available space
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