Blood, Sweat, and Strategy Are the Price of Domination
In Before, every movement and every moment is a balance between domination and a return to the soil.
The wilderness wants you gone. So do the animals. So do the nomads. So do the other players.
Your units must eat, drink, sleep, stay warm, or die trying.
Found your first settlement for safety. Grow the number of units in your command. Fortify. Expand. Brew an independent power alone, join a tribe, or form your own, defining its name and colors, and recruiting others to your allegiance.
You can shape the world, from its hidden ruins to its trade routes, from its faiths, cultures, and sciences, to its blood-soaked battlefields.
You will write the histories of others.
Expand. Exploit. Exterminate. Explore. Exist. Exceed.
About
Before industry, before empire, before law - there was only the primal, pain, predators, and those with the will to rule them.
You are barefoot, alone, exposed. No map. No mission. Just wilderness - ancient, alive, and hostile.
First, you'll fight to stay alive. Then, you'll rush to settle - to fortify, to grow your numbers, to raise defenses. And finally: to choose. Exist and endure - or exceed and dominate?
Before is an online survival strategy game - open-world, unforgiving, risky, and rewarding. An experience forged in the primal.
"There is no one way to victory, yet it is always forwards."
True Base-Building
Build from the dirt up - foundations, walls, stairs, defensive towers, and traps.
Every square placed is a tactical decision. Every structure built is a home, a statement, a foothold, a safe haven, or a deception in stone.
Before's building is fully modular, tiered, and dependent on both intelligent farming and looting.
Crafting, Resource Extraction and Trading
Arm your units with tools and weapons: handaxes, crossbows, explosives, and siege gear. Specialize them. Strengthen them. Prepare them for the next encounter - or the next raid.
Fortify your base with modular structures and defenses: traps, reinforced doors, mounted turrets, cannons, and concealed bunkers. Every upgrade is a statement - and a challenge to soon to be dead and looted raiders.
Exploit and control : build mines to harvest gold and rare ores. Smelt in furnaces. Establish trading posts. Expand your reach - or your wealth.
Use what you've crafted to raid, defend, loot, trade, and conquer. Trade if you must. Hoard if you can. Gold itself is power.
Craft to Survive. Craft to Dominate.
PVP With Real Consequences
Raiding is unavoidable. Preventing it is power.
Weak walls falter. Weak settlements fall. Weak strategies fail.
But place your trust in yourself, in your architecture, your doors, your hidden bunkers, your automated defenses, and above all - your foresight - and you won't just survive the raids. You'll command the raiders.
Four and More Paths to Fame
Guide each of your units in unique and invaluable combinations of specialities.
Science - Study your surroundings to invent tools, and unlock new technologies.
Faith - Sacrifice, pray, and channel the ether to bend the world's fate and increase your following.
Culture - Unify your tribe, manipulate others, and harness the game-changing powers of arts and the written word.
Combat - Fight and dominate to unlock unique skills and tactics for battlefield prowess.
Each discipline brings new powers, but power invites envy. Your units, painstakingly trained and specialized, are not invincible. Mismanage your might, and you'll become someone else's prize.
Primal Strategy
Before is not just about survival. It's about defining your little corner of the world. Or perhaps owning all of it.
Explore: Move through unique biomes, weather systems, ruins, settlements, and stories.
Expand: Build new bases, expand borders, found your tribe - or tribes, deceive, infiltrate, manipulate, conquer, or command.
Exploit: Mine rare ores, claim choke points, automate production and units' actions.
Exterminate: Rob, Raid, siege or ambush. Or build defenses that vanquish and absorb the over-zealous armies of others.
Exist or Exceed: Act as a territorial overlord, the right hand of powerful allies, or a rebel beyond everyone's reach.
The map is always changing. Are you the one changing it?
Prestige Has a Memory
Eventually, the map will wipe. The fray will end. After each wipe a new sun will rise, a newly generated map will be there for your taking. And you will be readier for it.
Nonetheless, your actions are forever.
→ Which tribe held the most territory?
→ Who mined the most riches?
→ Who had the oldest surviving settlement?
→ Who ruled in Science? Faith? Culture? Combat?
→ Which solos were the most powerful? Influential?
→ Who crafted the most? Who traded the most?
There is no single route to victory, yet the way to get there is always before you.
As the world turns, the leaderboard will count your successes. And when the world resets, your fame will remain.