Open The Gates!

Open The Gates! is a medieval real-time strategy game developed and published by Robin van der Horst that presents a creative spin on the castle-building formula by shifting the action into a side-scrolling perspective. Instead of simply imitating genre classics, it builds its own identity through a combination of settlement management, defensive planning, and tactical warfare. The story follows a fractured empire after the emperor's authority has collapsed, placing players in charge of reclaiming the realm one stronghold at a time. While the narrative mainly serves as a framework for the campaign, it successfully motivates the steady introduction of new mechanics, enemy factions, and increasingly demanding objectives. The heart of the experience lies in constructing a prosperous fortress capable of withstanding constant attacks. Every settlement begins with gathering essential resources such as wood, stone, food, and gold before expanding into a thriving military stronghold. Villagers must be assigned efficiently, production chains need to remain balanced, and every new building contributes to the long-term survival of the kingdom. As enemy armies grow stronger, players are encou…

Game kinda barebone . Difficulty isnt scaling with campaign. On top of that adding or removing new building kind troublesome .

Fun, refreshingly new type of game.

It is fun!

Definitely a pleasant game, lots of content and definitely lots of strategies to employ. Although I will state that the difficulty "Spikes" out of nowhere, doesn't matter what difficulty you're playing on the missions go from being decent to get whooped "enemies invade in 3min" in that time you have to build a whole town and gather units and a defense and it's honestly complicated and unreasonable. --> If not for the ridiculous moments where the enemy invades where you have very little prep time this would be a fantastic game for what it is, however that is just annoying! It's still a wonderful game but this makes it very annoying <--

An RTS side-scrolling city-builder game, it has a lot of charm. Criminally underrated. There is no pause, so the micro management can get intense sometimes, but knowing when to turtle and when to charge all out with the right unit type, makes all the difference. The visuals are varied and the voice acting is funny. Having never heard of this game until today leads me to believe that there are many hidden gems within the Steam catalog