Nova Roma is a city builder developed by Lion Shield and published by Hooded Horse. The game focuses on building temples and earning the favor of the Roman gods to improve and build new structures as you pave the road for your own Rome.
For more information on the game, please visit its official Steam page here.
Note that the review is for the Early Access version of Nova Roma.
Times New Roman
From the moment you jump into your island or piece of land, you’ll realize that Nova Roma is different from other city builders. Here, you don’t have to set up structures to collect wood and stone at the beginning. Instead, you can manually ask the citizens to clean up the trees in an area for you or mine the stone.
You can even point at an individual tree and have it cut. Furthermore, there’s no particular limit to how much wood and stone you can store, because the citizens will leave them right there and use them when needed.
While these are all small things, it builds a strong first impression of the game, especially for avid fans of the genre. From there, I knew it was going to be a fun ride. Be careful though, this game isn’t all nice and cozy, as it gives you some serious challenges down the road.
At the Mercy of the Gods
From the mechanics that stand out, one of them is that you have to constantly build temples and care for the Roman gods. You cannot neglect them, especially at higher difficulties. You’ll have to keep making offerings and building new temples if you want to keep your citizens peaceful. That can get a little stressful in its own way, but the gods do provide buffs if you’re nice to them.
If you fail to do so though, you’ll incur their wrath, and that will result in your structures getting destroyed, or you’ll have to suffer from drought, flooding, and other disasters.
If you want your experience of Nova Roma to be relaxing, the game also gives you the option to disable these requirements, including invasions. Once you’ve disabled the wrath of the gods and the invasions, it’s just a regular city builder where you enjoy building your own Rome.
Making Romulus and Remus Proud
Moving on to building mechanics, you have to unlock new buildings from the favor menu, which can be accessed from the temples or by clicking the favor icon in the user interface.
Here, you’ll have to use the favor obtained from completing divine tasks to unlock new structures. The placement of each structure matters a lot in Nova Roma. Citizens have tough demands, and they don’t want any loud structures near residential areas, for example. So you’ll have to avoid that and give them whatever they need to keep their happiness above 50.
Now, let’s come to the downsides. The game is straight-up difficult. Unless you’re playing on Custom or Easy difficulty, I don’t think it can be a fun experience. Floods, plagues, droughts, and fires are constantly threaten your structures and production. The citizens themselves are hard to please as well.
After you’re a few decades into the game, it’s a blessing if your citizenry have a happiness of over 50, because it’s just so challenging to keep it there.
A City to Behold
In terms of visuals and graphics, the game manages to deliver the vibe it intends to give off. The building designs are good, and the landscape is also designed well. Nothing falls short here.
The sound is also decent; you won’t get tired of hearing the in-game background music even if you keep playing for hours, which is especially important for city builders.
Verdict
Overall, Nova Roma has much to improve as of now, but the game has potential. If you’re looking for a city builder that gives you a challenge or are just looking for something different in the genre, you might just like Nova Roma.
Developer: Lion Shield
Country Of Origin: United States
Publisher: Hooded Horse
Release Date: 26 March, 2026
The review for Nova Roma is based on a PC Early Access copy provided by the developers. It may be updated with a score when the game releases in full.
If you’ve already got the game, you can check out its guides here. You may also like the following pages:
- Into Indie Games Homepage
- Life Is Strange: Reunion – Walkthrough Hub
- Project Songbird Complete Walkthrough
- The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin – Walkthrough Hub
- Crimson Desert – Walkthrough Hub
Fahad Suleman is an avid fan of fighting games who spends most of his time writing walkthroughs and reviews for cozy indie titles or mashing around in Tekken. If he’s not writing or playing any games, you’ll often find him watching historical videos on YouTube for hours.
