Kayerts
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 883
What the hell is Thea?
Thea: The Awakening: Superfluous Subtitle is a roguelike, turn-based, 3X (more on that in a bit) strategy game in a setting based on Slavic mythology. It's got a number of weird ideas that work unexpectedly well together, which for me usually means "this is a good game to look at 'later,' i.e. never," but I made an exception here. I'm glad I did, so I thought I'd show it off here and hopefully encourage some other people to play.
What's interesting about this game?
What sucks about this game?
What's ambiguous about this game?
What's the deal with this LP?
I play, getting audience feedback when there isn't a clearly optimal solution. That means I probably won't ask your opinion when the choices are "accept free loot" or "die fighting against hopeless odds," but will try to when the choices are more interesting. The audience is free to yell suggestions at me at any time.
Thea is a roguelike, so in the spirit of that, I'll be playing this ironman-style; i.e., if I make a mistake, I live with it, unless the mistake proves fatal, in which case I die with it and start over. (Because GAM3R HONOUR, you see.) Also, note the "man" in "ironman;" I'll be playing like one, so obviously I'll be selecting the maximum possible difficulty settings.
First decision: In Thea, you are told in the intro that you play as a deity who's recently woken up. This isn't a particularly meaningful conceit, because the game immediately forgets about this and doesn't mention it again until the ending. For all intents and purposes, you are actually playing as that deity's tiny village of remaining followers. (There's also a part where you're required to defeat an avatar of your deity (i.e., of yourself) and thereby get some critical information from said deity, which doesn't make a ton of sense within the narrative frame.) In gameplay terms, deity choice affects the bonuses your villagers receive, some events, and one part of the main quest. Your options:
A) Veles, Master of Magic and Lord of the Underworld. Low power, has one of the more fun gimmicks.
B) Svarog, God of Heavenly Fire. Mid-tier power, fun-ish bonuses.
C) Zorya, the Twin Guardian Goddesses. Mid-tier power, potentially fun gimmicks.
D) Horos, Lord of the Night and Master of the Moon. Mid-tier power, most fun playstyle in the game
E) Mokosh, Mother Earth. Mid/high power, boring playstyle.
F) Morena, Goddess of Death and Rebirth. Low power, boring playstyle.
G) Lada, Goddess of Hope and Beauty: Very high power, mid-tier playstyle.
H) Perun, God of Thunder and Head of the Pantheon: New Game+ option; intended to be the most powerful in the game. My experience is that you get fewer cool events than the other deities, but that could just be limited sampling.
I'll heed the will of the people, but I'd advise against Morena (she's the least interesting) or Perun (overpowered by design).
CONTENTS:
LIGHTBRINGERS:
You have chosen to enter the world as the last seven disciples of Svarog, Lord of Heavenly Fire. May the Sacred Flame burning in your village's Holy Pooptower spread and eventually light the whole of Thea.
I. DAWN OF THE CRUSADE
II. THE NIGHT IS DARK AND FULL OF TERRORS
III. DOGS OF THE SUN
IV. LUX PERPETUA
V. ETERNAL SUNSHINE
Thea: The Awakening: Superfluous Subtitle is a roguelike, turn-based, 3X (more on that in a bit) strategy game in a setting based on Slavic mythology. It's got a number of weird ideas that work unexpectedly well together, which for me usually means "this is a good game to look at 'later,' i.e. never," but I made an exception here. I'm glad I did, so I thought I'd show it off here and hopefully encourage some other people to play.
The game takes place in the grim darkness of fantasy Potatoland. There's been a catastrophe that destroyed civilization and covered the world in darkness, and the player's job is to guide a tiny village of survivors to grow strong and eventually repair the world. The world is full of roving bands of monsters and grows more dangerous as distance from your starting village increases. Thea is grimdark in a very literal way; after sunset, impenetrable darkness falls on the world, and enemy bands become much more belligerent. It's the first game I've played where the design seems to encourage your brave heroes to spend each night at home, hiding under the bed.
Thea is thematically grimdark, too! For starters, since the catastrophe, the gates of the underworld have been slammed shut, with the consequence that in addition to general hostility from the living, Thea is technically a zombie apocalypse game. Beyond that, the world loves to inflict random cruelty on its inhabitants. Demon witches that murder children. Ancient evils that come unbound if you sneeze at them. Roving bands of murderers that carry off your children. Striga who will saunter up to your party and permanently mindfuck a member away from you. Dragons that fly over your village and roast your children from low orbit. Evil spirits poisoning your water supply for jollies. Slavers kidnapping children. (Thea REALLY hates children, bros.)
You advance through the game across several vectors: you recruit more followers, you level up those followers, you acquire better resources and means of production, you craft better equipment, and eventually you become strong enough to face the endgame challenges.
You're limited to a single village; hence, the eXpand element of the 4X genre is absent here. It's an interesting design decision; it seemed lame at first, but it contributes to the besieged atmosphere of the game. (You can't realistically defend multiple settlements on higher difficulties, anyway.)
In terms of similar games, the nearest match in my experience is Eador, which I also liked. Other comparisons that have been made are a cross between King of Dragon Pass and Master of Magic, with economy out of Sid Meier's Colonization.
Thea is thematically grimdark, too! For starters, since the catastrophe, the gates of the underworld have been slammed shut, with the consequence that in addition to general hostility from the living, Thea is technically a zombie apocalypse game. Beyond that, the world loves to inflict random cruelty on its inhabitants. Demon witches that murder children. Ancient evils that come unbound if you sneeze at them. Roving bands of murderers that carry off your children. Striga who will saunter up to your party and permanently mindfuck a member away from you. Dragons that fly over your village and roast your children from low orbit. Evil spirits poisoning your water supply for jollies. Slavers kidnapping children. (Thea REALLY hates children, bros.)
You advance through the game across several vectors: you recruit more followers, you level up those followers, you acquire better resources and means of production, you craft better equipment, and eventually you become strong enough to face the endgame challenges.
You're limited to a single village; hence, the eXpand element of the 4X genre is absent here. It's an interesting design decision; it seemed lame at first, but it contributes to the besieged atmosphere of the game. (You can't realistically defend multiple settlements on higher difficulties, anyway.)
In terms of similar games, the nearest match in my experience is Eador, which I also liked. Other comparisons that have been made are a cross between King of Dragon Pass and Master of Magic, with economy out of Sid Meier's Colonization.
What's interesting about this game?
* Atmosphere: It's very good! The art style is completely beautiful, and the music's pretty good, but where the the game really shines is in creating an oppressive sense of foreboding. Thea is a hostile world, and it grows more hostile at an alarming pace, which puts pressure on the player to take any advantage they can get. But Thea's also very punishing of overextension, so the player's frequently in the position of having to determine which risks are acceptable and which aren't.
* Gameplay: Thea is a strategy game with survival elements; one of them's that you try to spend the minimal possible time in combat. It's usually preferable to try alternatives to man-fighting enemies, e.g. sneaking into the enemy camp and murdering them in their sleep. Open battle is truly the last argument of boyars.
Moreover, a major goal is to get to the point where battles are decided before they are joined, which translates to gathering precious materials and crafting quality equipment from them.
* Setting: Most of us are jaded dicks, so Slavic mythology is more interesting to see in games than generic Tolkienesque fantasy. Thea does see the entrance of Tolkienesque races, but the Thean incarnations are closer to their roots in Norse mythology. E.g., there are elves and dwarves, but they are rare and generally very powerful. Recruiting a dwarf in a lot of games feels like enlisting an ambulatory footrest that can absorb punches and occasionally even punch back; here, they're stumpy murder machines. The one named elf you can run into used to be worshipped as a god.
* Relatedly, the setting isn't low-magic, but the application of magic is as a ritualistic force rather than something you use to produce instantaneous effects. It's usually hard to get any magic-capable units on your own side, and when you do, the uses are pretty limited--mostly, you gain the option to break hexes during events. Magic is primarily what it is in folklore: a weird force that explains the otherwise inexplicable, and a way of dealing with antagonists who are otherwise untouchable.
* Difficulty: Thea is pretty hard on max difficulty. Significantly, you will run into things that can kick your ass, which you must avoid until later in the game. If you're like me, you will also find yourself weighing the risks and rewards of running through dangerous territory to reach a particular goal, hoping that the unstoppable army of undead you'll have to sneak past doesn't decide to break camp and chase you down.
* Gameplay: Thea is a strategy game with survival elements; one of them's that you try to spend the minimal possible time in combat. It's usually preferable to try alternatives to man-fighting enemies, e.g. sneaking into the enemy camp and murdering them in their sleep. Open battle is truly the last argument of boyars.
Moreover, a major goal is to get to the point where battles are decided before they are joined, which translates to gathering precious materials and crafting quality equipment from them.
* Setting: Most of us are jaded dicks, so Slavic mythology is more interesting to see in games than generic Tolkienesque fantasy. Thea does see the entrance of Tolkienesque races, but the Thean incarnations are closer to their roots in Norse mythology. E.g., there are elves and dwarves, but they are rare and generally very powerful. Recruiting a dwarf in a lot of games feels like enlisting an ambulatory footrest that can absorb punches and occasionally even punch back; here, they're stumpy murder machines. The one named elf you can run into used to be worshipped as a god.
* Relatedly, the setting isn't low-magic, but the application of magic is as a ritualistic force rather than something you use to produce instantaneous effects. It's usually hard to get any magic-capable units on your own side, and when you do, the uses are pretty limited--mostly, you gain the option to break hexes during events. Magic is primarily what it is in folklore: a weird force that explains the otherwise inexplicable, and a way of dealing with antagonists who are otherwise untouchable.
* Difficulty: Thea is pretty hard on max difficulty. Significantly, you will run into things that can kick your ass, which you must avoid until later in the game. If you're like me, you will also find yourself weighing the risks and rewards of running through dangerous territory to reach a particular goal, hoping that the unstoppable army of undead you'll have to sneak past doesn't decide to break camp and chase you down.
What sucks about this game?
* Card-based combat: Large numbers of our prestigious readership are triggered by card-based combat. I personally was skeptical, but it works reasonably well. Is it as good as tactical combat in your favorite tactical wargame? No; I don't think Thea's combat is anyone's favorite. But it's not bad, and it's a workable way to force you to care about how your characters are geared while constraining variance in outcomes. I.e., optimal tactical play isn't going to let you tackle too many encounters that merely competent play would lose. Optimal play might help you escape unscathed in an encounter that'd otherwise injure a few villagers.
What's ambiguous about this game?
* Randomness. Regardless of which deity you choose, there is one supreme god in Thea, and that is the dread Lord Arengee. Random events are a large part of the game, and the advantages you end up with are largely determined by how you exploit them. You will also end up getting unavoidably screwed by the RNG quite a few times.
* Pacing. Thea has a great beginning, a fantastic midgame, and a kinda bad endgame. The beginning is great because the world is full of things that want to kill you, but you have to explore it and are rewarded if you do. By midgame, you generally have the world around your village mapped out, and your job is to find a way to gain an advantage. Unless you're either lucky or significantly better than me, you'll have to make hard choices. The endgame sucks because, once you hit a certain threshold of power, little can keep you from snowballing out of control, and the challenge goes out of the game. This is somewhat mitigated because the main quests are straightforward and quick to complete, once you're powerful enough; if it gets too easy, there's little to keep you from just winning.
* Pacing. Thea has a great beginning, a fantastic midgame, and a kinda bad endgame. The beginning is great because the world is full of things that want to kill you, but you have to explore it and are rewarded if you do. By midgame, you generally have the world around your village mapped out, and your job is to find a way to gain an advantage. Unless you're either lucky or significantly better than me, you'll have to make hard choices. The endgame sucks because, once you hit a certain threshold of power, little can keep you from snowballing out of control, and the challenge goes out of the game. This is somewhat mitigated because the main quests are straightforward and quick to complete, once you're powerful enough; if it gets too easy, there's little to keep you from just winning.
What's the deal with this LP?
I play, getting audience feedback when there isn't a clearly optimal solution. That means I probably won't ask your opinion when the choices are "accept free loot" or "die fighting against hopeless odds," but will try to when the choices are more interesting. The audience is free to yell suggestions at me at any time.
Thea is a roguelike, so in the spirit of that, I'll be playing this ironman-style; i.e., if I make a mistake, I live with it, unless the mistake proves fatal, in which case I die with it and start over. (Because GAM3R HONOUR, you see.) Also, note the "man" in "ironman;" I'll be playing like one, so obviously I'll be selecting the maximum possible difficulty settings.
First decision: In Thea, you are told in the intro that you play as a deity who's recently woken up. This isn't a particularly meaningful conceit, because the game immediately forgets about this and doesn't mention it again until the ending. For all intents and purposes, you are actually playing as that deity's tiny village of remaining followers. (There's also a part where you're required to defeat an avatar of your deity (i.e., of yourself) and thereby get some critical information from said deity, which doesn't make a ton of sense within the narrative frame.) In gameplay terms, deity choice affects the bonuses your villagers receive, some events, and one part of the main quest. Your options:
A) Veles, Master of Magic and Lord of the Underworld. Low power, has one of the more fun gimmicks.
B) Svarog, God of Heavenly Fire. Mid-tier power, fun-ish bonuses.
C) Zorya, the Twin Guardian Goddesses. Mid-tier power, potentially fun gimmicks.
D) Horos, Lord of the Night and Master of the Moon. Mid-tier power, most fun playstyle in the game
E) Mokosh, Mother Earth. Mid/high power, boring playstyle.
F) Morena, Goddess of Death and Rebirth. Low power, boring playstyle.
G) Lada, Goddess of Hope and Beauty: Very high power, mid-tier playstyle.
H) Perun, God of Thunder and Head of the Pantheon: New Game+ option; intended to be the most powerful in the game. My experience is that you get fewer cool events than the other deities, but that could just be limited sampling.
I'll heed the will of the people, but I'd advise against Morena (she's the least interesting) or Perun (overpowered by design).
CONTENTS:
LIGHTBRINGERS:
You have chosen to enter the world as the last seven disciples of Svarog, Lord of Heavenly Fire. May the Sacred Flame burning in your village's Holy Pooptower spread and eventually light the whole of Thea.
I. DAWN OF THE CRUSADE
II. THE NIGHT IS DARK AND FULL OF TERRORS
III. DOGS OF THE SUN
IV. LUX PERPETUA
V. ETERNAL SUNSHINE
Last edited: