EGX Highlights: Silence Of The Siren asks what if Heroes Of Might And Magic had dieselpunk moles and was set in space?

Silence Of The Siren is a name I'm perpetually going to get mixed up with fellow strategy games Songs Of Silence and Songs Of Conquest over the next couple of years, but there's certainly no mistaking what this sci-fi, tactics explorathon looks and plays like when you see it in the flesh. Made by the same team behind 2018's Project Hospital, Silence Of The Siren is an homage to Heroes Of Might And Magic where several different alien races are fighting to control a distant alien planet. It's a little bit 4X-y, but not massively so, and I had a very fun time indeed with its EGX demo over the weekend, which I think I played for almost a solid hour and completely forgot about the growing queue of folks behind me. Sorry about that…

My demo put me in the spiky red army boots of its Fossorians, a space mole faction who are big into mechs, and riding around on giant motorbikes and other four-legged creatures they've enslaved. You begin with a base and a general to lead your army with, and ultimately this is a game about gathering resources, growing your ranks, upgrading your HQ with different building types, and gradually pushing out into the map to claim it for your own. In classic turn-based fashion, you've only got a set number of movement points per turn, so you'll need to plan your route carefully through its twisting canyons and rocky outcrops, peeling back the fog of war as you go.

You'll likely need to go reasonably carefully, as striding too close to an enemy will initiate combat. You can check their relative strength and what kind of losses you'll be looking at in advance by hovering your mouse over them, but you'll still need to get reasonably near them in order to do so. Some would deal 'Negligible' damage to me, and were consequently straightforward pushovers, but others would have done 'Extreme' damage with my current army, and some even told me 'Not a chance', mate, so you'll need to pick your battles carefully to make sure you don't get inadvertently wiped out. Luckily, you can reinforce your armies with more troops either by returning to your base at the end of every cycle (you can start training new troops at any time, but they're only available to hire at the start of a cycle), or you can recruit more generals to lead parties toward you and swap troops there and then on the map.

Battles play out on a hexagonal grid with each team at either end. If you have, in fact, played the aforementioned Songs Of Conquest, it's quite a similar setup, but for those that haven't, think The Banner Saga but with a side on view and you're halfway there. The fights I played were all on flat terrain, so there weren't any obstacles or height advantages to worry about like in Songs Of Conquest, but even without these tactical nuances, moving troops around the board, waiting for enemies to come closer and gauging how quickly to storm in myself provided plenty to wrap my head around as a first time experience. Plus, once you start adding general-specific abilities and skills into the mix - my mole general had a long-range area-of-effect missile attack, for example, and unlocked more as time went on - Silence Of The Siren's early game, at least, feels suitably well-judged at the moment.

Rather, the main worries I have right now lie elsewhere. I'm sure this was probably purely for the sake of the demo, but the AI was very defensive during my playthrough, and they'd simply sit on their claimed buildings without pursuing me across the map or making any kind of play on my own mines and factories as I left them undefended. Hopefully the final game will have a more active rivalry going on between you and your opponents, because without this it might end up being a bit frictionless.

It was also difficult to get a sense of just how challenging it would be to maintain a good economy in Silence Of The Sirens, as my demo already had loads of money in the mole coffers to let me try out different buildings and unit types. Some resources were available as standalone treasures to gobble up on the map itself, but you'll need to claim mines and other outposts if you want a steady supply of them, so if the balance is off here, then it could similarly wander into slightly easy territory - or indeed, be so gruellingly difficult that making any kind of progress could be a nightmarish slog.

In short, I need to have a proper go with Silence Of The Sirens in a different kind of demo setting, but for now, at least, I'm pretty excited by what I've seen. Your generals level up reasonably quickly and gain new abilities at a pretty good clip, and I very much enjoyed the skill that let me sweettalk some enemies into joining my own army before fighting them, so I'd have fewer bods to deal with on the board. The units themselves also look pretty cool, ranging from giant worms to ratty-looking mole snipers and big moles with metal gnasher claws, and there was a big mecha-mole driller beast I came across late on that looked proper nasty as well. And that's just the Fossorians. Thanks to my sneaky recruit ability, I also had some yellow moth lads with big Samus-like power arms and natty green scarves, and some jumbo caterpillar boys with big turquoise antenna. There's a lot to like here, and I'll be keeping a close eye on Songs Of - nope, Silence Of The Sirens (there we go) as development continues.