Venture with me to the depths of Hell as we strive to conquer the desolate landscape and rule the underworld with blood, cruelty, and schemes. ‘Solium Infernum’ is a turn-based, grand strategy game, developed and produced by League of Geeks, a Melbourne-based game company, and also the creator of a little game called ‘Armello’. If you haven’t checked that out, do it, I love Armello and still play it now because if you do like it, you will also like Solium Infernum. Released on the 22nd of February, this will be my final thoughts on the game overall.

I am lucky enough to be checking out the final build version of Solium Infernum before its launch in a couple of days. In Solium Infernum, you take control of an Archfiend trying to take the throne of Hell after the prince of darkness goes missing. Fight against other Archfiends using your legion’s strengths, and your cunning diplomacy skill, or perform a devilish ritual to hinder the rise of your competition. Each Archfiend has their own strengths and special abilities, so try them all and see what playstyle fits you best.

Every player and opponent starts with a home base and a legion of soldiers. You move your legions around the board claiming tiles and expanding your borders for every tile claimed. You only have a certain number of actions, two, unless you started with the ‘Crown of Bureaucracy’ relic giving you an extra order slot. Around the map, you will find ‘Places of Power’. These will give you prestige every turn, and some will also have extra effects like a plus one to your charisma.

The more prestige you have, the more you can rank up your Archfiend. This can help with diplomacy and tributes, to help crown you the winner, however, this also puts a target on your back. You cannot just attack others, if you wish to do so you must use diplomacy to insult or make demands of others if they refuse you can start a vendetta against that opponent, and the gloves are off until it is resolved. With this last pre-release review, I was given a list of known issues but I didn’t notice any at least none that affected my enjoyment so that is a great sign of things to come.

You collect currencies called tributes that you can use to purchase stronger legions, praetors who bolster the power of your legions or Places of Power. Also, you will use these currencies to buy rituals and artifacts that each have abilities to help or hinder, or you can buy power tiers. There are five powers; wrath, deceit, prophecy, destruction and charisma. Upgrading these will unlock new rituals, and give you more order slots, ritual slots and command ratings.

There are heaps of other abilities and schemes to unlock in the powers area so give it a look over to see which path seems the most fun and eventually if you are doing well, you can unlock the lot. Now that it is getting close to launch, I’ve been able to have a proper go at Solium Infernum winning a match playing different Archfiends. You can win by attacking and claiming the city of ‘Pandemonium’ but you then have to hold it while everyone comes for you, or have a high enough prestige to be voted in as the new ruler. There are other ways to win using deception and cunningness but the above are the most straightforward.

This game is complex and can be overwhelming even after playing the tutorial. I still struggle to work out at the end of the turn why some things happen before others, when in doubt though, you can always go to the encyclopedia for more information on certain aspects.

The one difficulty I found was finding others to play multiplayer with so I will go over my experience with the multiplayer test and the new feature. I played with a fellow reviewer and on the whole it was very fun. As I mentioned in the Multiplayer review, this would be an amazing professional game due to the sheer number of different tactics and the randomness of the bazaar with the legions, praetors, artifacts and manuscripts. I can see smarter more skilled tacticians than me crushing this in a professional competition; this could be a new e-sport with enough traction.

Multiplayer has two modes; Live and Asynchronous. Live being a full game done in one session where turns are minutes long. These games will take hours so make sure you have cleared your schedule. The other option, Asynchronous, is great for groups who don’t have a lot of time, with the turn time ranging from a day to a week before the game moves forward.

The art department has done an amazing job. All of the Archfiends look amazing but just wait until you see the card art! It looks so good, they have created masterpieces for the eyes. The landscapes, legions, and Places of Power are perfectly nightmarish, creating a wonderfully devilish experience.

The music is very on par with the theme using dark orchestral music accompanied by beautiful but ominous hymns. Also, as a special treat, Sarah Wolfe who some may know from Triple J or as a community manager and content creator for League of Geeks will be releasing her new single on release day. You can check it out also if you go to the credits. I was lucky enough to listen to it and it is spectacular and fits perfectly with the theme of this game. It’s dark and beautiful, so check that out, you won’t be disappointed.

I am in love with the premise of this game. Just like Armello, you can spend hours and hours never getting bored. I know my last session was roughly 7 hours as time flew by. It may seem complex in the beginning but once you start getting used to it and learn more of the tricks you will start using every ounce of tactics in your expansive arsenal. It’s been a long time since my first preview, and I am just as excited about the release as I was then. All I can say is Good work League of Geeks you’ve done it again!

Written by: Adam Brasher