“Hell is the others.” Locked in a small room, the protagonists of Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel No Escape gradually learn that looking, looking and looking at others is a particular form of nightmarish punishment. Lorsque vous écrivez sur les jeux vidéo, vous n’évoquez pas souvent la philosophie française ou la pressure psychologique, mais vous évoquez Solium Infernum, un nouveau jeu de stratégie qui se déroule enfer, où la manipulation et la ruse sont bien plus dangereuses que weapons. Influenced by Doom, Civilization, and Dark Souls, Solium Infernum pits you against human players (although single player is still available) as you fight for the throne of Hell: Lucifer has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and a new ruler of Hell is on the way. point of emergence selected. It all started in 2009.
“The original version of Solium Infernum was designed by the enigmatic Vic Davis of Cryptic Comet,” says Ty Carey, co-founder of League of Geeks and (new) creative director of Solium Infernum. “This was an incredible achievement for a solo indie developer with no experience in the gaming industry experimenting in the ‘digital board game’ space. It was never released on Steam and was only sold on Vic’s website. It was clunky in terms of looks and interface, but there was a diamond in the rough hidden in it.
“However, Solium Infernum struck a core group whose love of board games, indie strategy games, and all things weird and hellish seemed perfectly triangular,” Carey continues. “It was an experience that I really wanted to share with the world. So, I sort of… I harassed Vic a bit, sending him yearly emails asking what happened to the license. When we had a team looking for the next job, we would go crazy.
Playing as one of eight “Archidemons”, each with their own unique units and abilities, there are multiple ways to become the hellish ruler of Hell. Open warfare is possible, but Solium Infernum’s strongest weapons are diplomacy, subterfuge, and political bickering.
In our initial preview, we saw how the entire game could be reversed in just eight moves, and without a single combat encounter. Think of yourself as Machiavelli or, in more modern terms, Littlefinger from Game of Thrones. The strongest players in Solium Infernum will remain in the shadows, pulling all the strings, and no one will notice.
“Solium Infernum is not about building a base or outright conquest,” Carey says, “but about intense political rivalry and intrigue, where information and secrets are really strong, and the use of diplomatic ‘moves’ to make vulnerable to rivals. how to move forward
“The game allows you to get inside your opponent’s head, trying to outsmart and outsmart. This is because all players issue orders at the same time, which means you need to be able to anticipate your opponent’s plans. This is a serious, high-stakes mind game. The question is, how bad can you get?
If you capture the capital of Hell, Pandemonium, and hold it for enough turns, you win. But there is another, more complex system that Solium Infernum emphasizes, through which you can gradually earn the admiration of the bureaucratic Conclave and become an anointed leader through your cunning and manipulation.
Each player has a “Prestige” meter, which indicates how respected they are among Hell’s government elite. Raise it high enough by holding certain important areas on the map or scoring political points for your rivals and the hellish House of Representatives will elect you to Lucifer’s throne. However, endure humiliation or fail to predict the hidden plans of your rivals, and your prestige will suffer greatly.
Let’s say you’re competing with two other Archfiends. You can offer yourself as a vassal to one of them, thus closing a pact and becoming part of his entourage. You can then criticize or insult the other player in front of the Parliament of Hell, making him accept your humiliation and lose his face, or respond to your disrespect by declaring war.
If they take the bait, you’ll turn the other two Archfiends against each other. As they spend their blows without breaking anything, you strengthen your army and move towards Pandemonium.
“The foundation of Solium Infernum has always been the evil, high-stakes psychological game you play against your opponents,” Carey explains. “It’s something that a lot of games try to accommodate, but they often overlook the kinds of stories that can emerge or how the social dynamics work. There are plenty of board games that offer interesting social dynamics or intrigue and bluff mechanics, but strategy games tend not to lean into these areas.
“The original Solium Infernum was great at creating a social pressure cooker and we wanted to capture that and even find ways to showcase it. To us, success feels like a conspiracy of people in the context of their games, both inside and outside of them, from a social engineering perspective.
“It also fits the hellish setting,” says Carey. “Unlike the chaos of fire and brimstone, hell is really stuck in the bureaucracy and moves through it. There’s something exciting about presenting your grievances to the Parliament of Hell or cleverly insulting your rivals before the Conclave. The most ruthless politics seem to be carried out on a razor’s edge, waiting to explode into violence.
But of course, full-scale war is always possible. Each archfiend has a personal legion devoted entirely to them. You can also purchase new units at the Solium Infernum Bazaar, essentially an auction house where each Archfiend offers allegiance to various demonic factions.
“There are a lot of Inferno units out there,” Carey says, “with different balance stats (for example, some may be better at ranged attack than melee or throw) and abilities that change. The auction house offers them somewhat randomly, which means that there will be very different legions in each game you see and face.
Solium Infernum also has a permanent “tower card”. In keeping with the classical notion of hell, where the laws of physics and reality no longer apply, the world of Solium Infernum is almost like a small sphere: if the enemy legions move east, move far enough and that same legion will be in your west. There is nowhere to lean against the wall, no way to gain a foothold in an impregnable position. Hell is the others. In Solium Infernum, your enemies are constantly surrounding you.
“Playing Solium Infernum is described as ‘plunging into the cold glory of a tough decision,'” says Carey. “We call it The Strategy Game from Hell or sometimes jokingly Dark Souls of Strategy because it puts you in a very difficult and painful position. Screws really do revolve around you; after all, we are in hell.”
Although single player is available, the essence of Solium Infernum is slow asynchronous PVP. Each player can enter their shot, then leave the game and wait for their opponents. No one knows what everyone else is doing until the round is over – log in, make your move, then log back in the next day to see what everyone has done and decide how to react.
Like a lengthy game of mail chess, while allowing limited-time players to enjoy extensive games of strategy, it reinforces Solium Infernum’s emphasis on planning, subterfuge, and political machinations.
“Few games offer a long asynchronous gaming experience,” says Carey. “We coined the phrase ‘scheme in a dream’, which means that the game will stay with you after you close it; you’ll be thinking about your next moves and your opponent’s plans while you’re lying in bed awake at night.
“It also gives you the ability to make short moves in the game regularly, which is great if you don’t have time for a multi-hour gaming session, but you can still do it. You’ll get a notification that your queue is ready, then log in and start your queue, which can only take a few minutes if you’ve already thought of your plans ahead of time.
While Solium Infernum’s release date is unknown, a tech demo of the game will be released in 2023, which League of Geeks says will provide live feedback from potential players. You can participate through Solium Infernum Discord. League of Geeks also hosts regular developer diaries on Steam, where you can already add Solium Infernum to your wishlist.
“There’s something special about Solium Infernum that you risk ruining when you take it apart and put it back together, even with the best of intentions,” says Carey. “We are looking for the most obvious forms of friction, confusion, or complexity, and seeing if there is a more fluid way to look through the lens of modern design, using the additional decade of game theory that has passed since the release of the Solium. original.
“The new Solium Infernum will have its own unique feel. It will be different, but that’s okay. And not knowing exactly what that feeling will be is really exciting.
If you’re craving Solium Infernum, check out some of the other best 4X games in the meantime. You can also try fantastic real time games or maybe the best global strategy games for pc.
Source : PC Gamesn
