FreeHolder Demo

Being a slave back in the day was a much more possible outcome for those who weren’t born with blue blood in their veins, especially since human lives were not exactly sacred or anything like that. Thus, most people were forced to work until they dropped, especially if they chose tough jobs like mining or something similar. On the other hand, not everyone had it this rough, because some did quite well for themselves.

FreeHolder is an interesting combination of genres in which you have to survive, improve your character’s abilities and even expand like in a strategy game. On top of all that there are a few roguelike and TBS elements, which means that it might take you a while to get familiar with everything the gameplay has to offer, although there’s a helpful guide to get you started.

The story talks about three slaves that manage to escape their owners and make their way to the outskirts of the Roman Empire. Here they hope to start a new life and survive in hiding, but their luck runs out when a census comes by their farm. Thankfully, this particular census is willing to turn a blind eye to the whole thing as long as you run the farm as efficiently as possible and provide him with a bribe as well.

Although the interface is a tad confusing at first, it shouldn’t be that tough to figure out what you have to do. In essence, each character class has unique abilities and skills, which allows you to take care of certain things a little bit better. Hence, you can choose to play as an experienced farmer and quickly develop your agricultural endeavors, or you can try a warrior and fight against your captors.

Regardless of what you choose, it’s important to know that the action takes place in turns and each character has a certain number of action points that can be used per turn. Permadeath is a thing as well, so you should be careful not to die, otherwise you’ll have to start all over again. Lastly, the graphics are as simple as they can get, but they are by no means ugly.

All things considered, FreeHolder is still in development at the moment, so it’s only natural that it has flaws and missing elements. However, the developers are constantly improving it, which means that it’s only going to get better over time.