Today we become as gods again in Thea 2: The Shattering, guiding our wee tribe of believers through a fantasy post-apocalypse rooted in Slavic mythology. It's the sequel to 2015's Thea: The Awakening, a game described by Rob Zacny as "a survival 4X RPG roguelike with crafting and card combat" in our lukewarm Thea: The Awakening review. That's a lot going on and it didn't…
Thea: The Awakening
1 year ago
3 years ago
Feature: The fall of Bilge Finger
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.…
Feature: Welcome to Bilge Finger
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.…
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…
4 years ago
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…
Feature: A 3/4X game?
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…
Feature: A survival 4X RPG roguelike with crafting and card combat.
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…
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…