Thea: The Awakening [official site] is a turn-based game of survival and strategy set in a dark world of Slavic myths. As a group of humans, you have emerged from an era of bad times and must regrow your village into something resembling a society. In the conclusion of this two-part diary, Brendan loses control. You can read part one of the Thea diary here.

Bucket Girl is dead. The village came under attack by bears, wolves and hulking rats . They savaged her in the card-based foray. She survived the battle, only to die of the wounds a day later. It was a dark time for the citizens of Bilge Finger. She is survived by her widower Bogart McTrout and her other widower, Funky Frida. The game is sad for me, offering its condolences in the form of a dialogue box. And so more souls go to the beyond, it says. +1 XP . … [visit site to read more]

Thea: The Awakening [official site] is a turn-based game of survival and strategy set in a dark world of Slavic myths. As a group of humans, you have emerged from an era of bad times and must regrow your village into something resembling a society. In the first of this two-part diary, Brendan attempts just that.

I have 5 bones, 77 meats and 6 children. Those are my village’s resources. There s a lot of other things, of course, but those are the most important. The children will one day grow into fully-fledged villagers but for now, they are marked as a resource, possibly stored in the same warehouse as the coal and vegetables. But it is their potential that keeps the rest of us going the thought of a brighter future that makes life worth living in the town of Bilge Finger. I wonder what happens when you drag the children to this box?

“You are about to destroy 3 x Child. Are you sure?”

… [visit site to read more]

Both Graham and Rob Zacny have been intrigued by Thea: The Awakening [official site]. Zacco explained it was “a survival 4X RPG roguelike with crafting and card combat” and Grammers is into that differentness. I’m not saying those two need help making friends, but I will point out that they could now play it together if they wanted. Developers MuHa Games yesterday launched an update adding two-player co-op. Oh, and Thea’s in the Steam summer sale too.

… [visit site to read more]

Turn-based not-a-4X Thea: The Awakening [official site] is better than good; it’s interesting>. A novel mixture of mechanics that arguably breathes new life into a stagnant genre even if those same mechanics fail individually. It’s the sort of game that’s ripe for a sequel. In the meantime, I’ll settle for this big bit of free DLC that offers a bunch of improvements, including an in-game editor, localisation, English voice over, and giants.

… [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

I am bored of traditional 4X games and am eager for something different. Thea: The Awakening [official site] is certainly that. It’s a 4X-alike which skips ‘expand’, giving you just a single village to look after, and a mobile expeditionary squad with which to encounter the world’s fantasy creatures through brief choose-your-own adventures.

… [visit site to read more]

If nothing else, Thea: The Awakening [official site] is different, and different can go a long way.

That also makes it a difficult game to assess. Most games lend themselves to comparison with the best games in their genre, or they are clearly borrowing from other games, and I can look at how one design is in dialogue with another. None of that changes how I feel about a game, but it does help me understand and articulate my reactions.

Thea doesn’t work that way. It’s a survival 4X RPG roguelike with crafting and card combat. I can recognize all the ingredients, but the game itself is sui generis>. I can recognize the ingredients in the dish, but I’ve never encountered anything quite like it.

… [visit site to read more]

In spare minutes during the last day or so I’ve been trying to get my head around Thea: The Awakening [official site]. It’s a “turn-based strategic survival game.” It feels at times like a crossover between Civilization and my beloved NEO Scavenger, in that it’s a 4X but one in which you only ever have a single village and in which individual villagers have real value. But then its combat plays out as a card game designed by a programmer who worked on The Witcher 3’s Gwent, and your exploration of its world is marked by choose-your-own tales of Slavic mythology.

It is interesting. It seems quite good. And it left Early Access last Friday.

… [visit site to read more]