CORDONCORDON

CORDON is a hardcore single-player survival game about escaping across the border. You are a deserter, and the country will not let you go. Guard posts on the roads, days of frozen backcountry ahead. Stay in the forest or risk the open road. Get there before your food and strength run out.

The country has closed its borders. Leaving is forbidden, and the border is guarded. There is only one way left: on foot, through the forest, around the guard posts. On the other side of the cordon, no one will find you.

Choose the route

The road is faster, but the road has guard posts. In the forest no one will see you, and no one will help. Either fight your way through, or stay in the forest for as long as your strength lasts. You choose again every day.

Mind the locals

The villages have food and warmth, but a stranger is noticed at once. To the locals you are a deserter and a traitor, and someone may report you. You can talk your way into a trade, or take what you need from someone's home, but then you had better not linger.

Keep warm, keep your strength

Ration your food by the day, and by evening find somewhere warm to sleep. Fall asleep in the cold and you will not wake up.

One way through

One attempt to get there. There is no undoing a mistake, and if they catch you at a guard post, they send you back where you came from.

What's in the game

• Guard posts and patrols. Go around them, or fight your way through.
  
• Inventory management. A grid of slots, pockets and a backpack. Space and weight are limited, so you decide what to take and what to leave.
  
• Resources. Food is scarce and has to last for days. Your strength isn't endless either.
  
• Cold. Sleep somewhere warm, or you won't wake up.
  
• Locals. You can trade with them, or rob them. But someone may report you.
  
• One save. Die or get caught at a post, and the story is over.
  
• Single-player, third-person.