Lines like "Aw no, dude. What's the Chosen One doing over here? That's suuuuucks" make me really want a tv show or something about an evil overlord who acts exactly like Splatty.
This is a really excellent game. It doesn't have the typical problem of games like Civ or Total War, where you know you've won the game less than half way through the process. You can lose until you've won - which is how every game should be.
I realized that that is the problem I have with 99% of the strategy games I play...the latter half of the game is just going through the motions to wrap up the game which I sometimes don't even bother cos it gets tedious. thanks to your comment, looks like I have to check this one out for myself. i'm curious to know how they accomplish that.
It's a very interesting approach...basically you act as an agent of entropy in what is a very self stabilising system ...so if you don't plan your approach and break it just right it tends to self repair. I found a little distraction in the chosen ones homeland (plagues a good and often fairly easy to start one) goes a long way towards having a smooth(er) slide into the apocalypse 👍😋👍😅
Oh it is. The chosen one has literally ripped victory from the jaws of defeat. I got blindsided from the south as the hero charged through orc territory in one of the most protagonist moves ever. I wasn't even mad.
That's a reason why I hardly ever finish my Total Warhammer campaigns, I love the start but at some point when I know I've snowballed enough it just gets boring, like when I can auto resolve almost every battle.
so to recap: > equip agent with adorable monkey > befriend enemy heros > die foolishly > enemy heros proceed to wreak havoc to avenge your monkey and fool. jesus christ this game has amazing organic storytelling.
The courtier almost always start being married, so you can have it doing shit all over the place and a hero will defend you from "slander", if you die, they go mad with grieve and attack😂 it's great
The adorable monkey isnt that strong. The thing that makes heroes vendetta are blood ties, which tricksters, nobles and warlocks have with other humans depending on their starting settlement. (Tricksters can also be Elves) I find Attack Monkey to be the strongest trait for trickster, it lets you hit and run (which is already strong as a tactic) and bootstrap your early game economy/trinket pool. And later on you get to hemmorage dangerous heroes gold supply as the attack monkey can steal up 50 gold a combat, whereas the pickpocket monkey has a cooldown. Dangerous heroes dont come out of nowhere, follow the money
An awesome and deep true strategy game! One time I had a very successful Orc Warlord with powerful Horde. They constantly harassed neighboring kingdom until humans mobilized and ganged up on them. Great battles were fought near orc fortresses, and my Warlord personally dispatched of 8 heroes, until he was defeated and orcs were dispersed. Then my Warlock Necromancer arrived and raised massive undead armies from the fallen orc and human warriors. After that this human kingdom was utterly destroyed with just a couple of settlements left. In the mean time in the North the biggest kingdom finally embraced the Darkness and turned into a Dark Empire, while the Chosen One was distracted with the Orc and then the Necromancer.
Yeah, this kind of story building that this game could provide is amazing. It would be cool if Necromancer would resurrect Orc Warlord too, would make a story even more warcraft-y (especially counting that first Death Knight there was orc too, if I remember correctly)
Awareness is the killer. The Chosen One will usually become aware just before the first seal breaks (imagine them looking at the stars and recalling the ancient prophecy that foretold your return, and naming them as the only one being able to stop the coming darkness). Once aware they will start running around the map to spread the awareness, getting others to not only see your agents' direct actions, but also the larger picture, and thus becoming more inclined to act against you...
The game is a game of balancing awareness with your shadow growth (or gods win condition). You basically want shadow to grow faster than awareness, a fully aware character will not act against you if they are also enshadowed. Basically all characters are neutral, shadowed characters are your property, and aware unenshadowed characters are straight up enemies. The pascals wager quadrant is in your favour: 2 good outcomes, 1 bad and 1 neutral So the economy/balancing act is supporting and growing your enshadowed "friends"/allies. And actively killing/crippling/terrorizing aware enemies. Plot assisinations on aware or soon to be aware rulers, and try to set up the heirs to be enshadowed. When plotting wars, try to plot them between 2 aware soverigns or a civil war with an aware soverign. I always go into a game with the perspective of creating a cold war between the planned nations of shadow with the most likely alliance candidates. So i foster maximum love and order into the shadow nations far from the COs home, and plot absolute chaos and death in everywhere near the COs home. Not only do you weaken future alliance candidates, but you exploit the chosen ones bias to his home, which will distract him from countering your overall strategy. Sort of like Sauron bribing and corrupting the Easterlings while plotting to destroy everything near Aragorn. A big mistake people make when going military is not having a political goal: you need to kill and terrorize aware rulers. A dead population is worth an enshadowed one in score, but more valuable under an aware ruler. Remember that aware rulers draw funds from the population to fund heroes who act against you.
I think the awareness stems from the fact that chosen ones usually receive their info from trusted sources (such as prophetic visions after good drag of a crack pipe) and not from gossiping of nobles and news of the town criers. In other words, their awareness is supernatural because they, just like your supplicant, are an agent for greater force and those forces can see you even when you haven't done much yet.
Occasionally a hero with odd traits starting off might neglect to spread awareness right away and give your agents an extra head start. Or you can try to intervene early for the same effect.
@@kenjethao7774 don't forget painting a huge sign "THE END IS NIGH" and starting proselytising on streets about all the evil in the world. That's how heroes usually do it.
Love this game, its so good to see the concept of the original "That Which Sleeps" game (which ended up being a scam) brought to fruition in such a comprehensive and inspired way.
The art style of "That Which Sleeps" was awesome. I don't believe the game was 100% a scam from the beginning, rather I think the developer bit off more than they could chew and fled. There was enough of a game shown off in devlogs to know there was something there, but everything interacted with everything else in such a complicated way I doubt he had the ability to make the AI work for a full play through. It's too bad he couldn't at least release the assets.
@@JWar- There were indeed some great ideas and game mechanics in TWS, many of which made it into Shadows of Forbidden gods and were even improved on. I'd agree that it probably didn't start off as a scam but sadly that's exactly the way it ended up, with the dev casually lying through his teeth every step of the way.
I don't think That Which Sleeps was a scam, because that implies malicious intent. I just feel it ended up being a project that exceeded the dev's capabilities and there were problems in the core logic of the game he was unable to solve, and that resulted in him being unable to make it work. But yes, this game feels very much like what That Which Sleeps was going to be, if perhaps slightly more modest presentation-wise.
This is an amazing game, I bought this after your last video and I come back to it from time to time And Ophanim plays on good vs evil, as you spread darkness more flock to your banner where they get brainwashed in the name of Light, as a small correction. And his 7 cost ability is massive fun
@@shemsuhor8763 I've taken a crack at games likes ck 2, vic 2, total war and the guild and managed to do good enough to win. However this game still stumbles me...
Ophanim is the only one where I cannot figure out how to effectively utilise it’s main gimmick. When I won with it I only had a few places under Ophanim’s light and the victory was almost all from shadow and destruction.
Just want to say to everyone this is a pretty cool game and I highly recommend it if the idea of being an evil god and destroying the world appeals to you at all. It plays a lot like one of those Crusader Kings games but is a lot more simple and less intimidating. Each god you choose varies up the gameplay a lot, and you can tweak it so if a certain mechanic frustrates you you can just remove it (like those wards that make an area uncorruptable). There's also modding that just adds even more value to this game. I really admire the dev for his ambition considering this is basically a one man show. Hope Splat's vid on him gives him more success.
The amount of depth and flexibility in the strategies you can devise in this game is incredible! Armies, intrigue, sabotage, regicide, necromancy, plague, high risk gardening, exploration, diplomacy, madness, shadow, religion, deep ones, meteors from space, and more! The structural storytelling and drama as your machinations turn your enemies to heel is riveting and fun!
47:13 The funny thing is, I know people with this accent, and it made me chuckle nearly to tears listening to this part. Either Splat knows peeps with this accent as well, or is very lucky with the consistency he has in applying it for the bit. Love it.
Bruh. Just get a good laptop and hook it up to your TV, you don't have to get a super space eating rig to play a lot of the best games, you're missing out!
This is not a chonky game. I can play this on my tablet. And the devs have been kind enough to provide a demo so it's free & easy to check if you can run it.
The fact you sang that queen song.... dude.. I sing that to myself while I'm driving around delivering a lot and I sit there thinking I'm probably the only person who knows that now! but man... epic soundtrack to an epic movie (Highlander) :D queen are awesome man :)
I bought this game from your last video review of it... It's amazing with unique gameplay and the dev only keeps working on it. Can't wait to see where it goes! Also thanks for the good rec!
Great to see more of this! I hope you do at least one full playthrough of it sometime. 25:10 - debatable, imo - sometimes heroes make good agents, but as fully enshadowed heroes, they aren't harming you (and may be helping you), and I'm fairly sure (I might be wrong) that when you make a hero into one of your agent, another (fresh and unshadowed) hero is created to take their place (like what happens when a hero is killed). And it still takes recruitment points and an agent slot to do this, so you could have just created another agent normally instead. 32:00 - btw, since you didn't mention it, might be worth noting that there's map filters and stuff that you can use to find said geomantic loci (among other things). Also, it might be worth mentioning that the game has added mod support since the last time you covered it! :D Opinion time: I think that Vinerva actually makes at least as good of a tutorial god as She Who Will Feast. Yes, she's more complicated, but she's more complicated in a way that encourages the player to learn the game mechanics - a lot of her abilities work better if used on humans with certain preferences (ie, greedy and cruel people will be more inclined to take your gift of plants that kill peasants and turn them into solid gold), which teaches the player to pay attention to the AI characters' motivations. The game actually tells you what the AI plans on doing, and more importantly, why it plans on doing that thing - it's really cool.
What makes enshadowed heroes valuable are 1 their minions/gold/items give you tempo and 2 their affiliation: note all agent portaits have a border, this is the allegiance of their hometown: tricksters/warlocks/courtiers and warlords will take upon the allegiance of their spawning tile. Courtiers, tricksters and obviously enshadowed heroes also will have a dynasty that is shared with other characters in the world. These ties are a heavily exploitable resource. Using enshadowed heroes to cause havoc to other nations will cause dynastic vendettas and nation wars. You are basically getting exponential value out of all aggresive/military actions your hero takes
I bought the game. I won with every god so far. I'm gonna play some more with specific themes/win conditions in mind. I've noticed (from my own experience and other's) is that the game is closer to Sandbox than Strategy by a little, which really helps enrich the organic storytelling that stems from such a unique concept and perspective for a Strategy game. I can't wait to try another run.
Hey Splattercat, I just wanted to let you know that I watched you cover Dredge about 6 months ago so I tried out the beta. I bought the game the day after it came out thanks to you. Great game!
For those interested in the game I'd recommend not going with the strategy here. In general, especially with this god, you want people to not notice you. When people catch on to what's going on, you're essentially sunk. I commonly summon the Courtier on turn 1. I do this for two reasons: the Courtier is good at infiltration and the longer your agents are alive, the stronger they'll get, because they'll have longer to level up. I take the perk with the Courtier to reduce security wherever he is. That's very useful. You want to spread shadow as you infiltrate. Every turn a location with high Shadow will 'leak' some Shadow in to all adjacent locations. So, you want to first infiltrate locations adjacent to your start. That will let Shadow flow flow more easily in to them. Whenever you successfully infiltrate, Lay Low until your profile bottoms out. You don't want your agents to get killed this early on and you don't want to cause a ruckus that will cause humanity to gang up against you. Don't build any Wells of Shadow now, either. They're too high profile. Once that is done, you should find all the holy sites and witch covens on the map. Once you infiltrate a witch coven you can always Lay Low there and the witches will help you spread Shadow. Infiltrating a Holy Site will give you some unique options, as well as the ability to summon the Baroness (who kicks all the butt) later. Next, find out what the largest religion is. Find out where it is based. There will be a large city with a cathedral wherever the religion is based. That is your target. If you can fully enshadow that city you can bend the religion to your will and all its members will fall to Shadow slowly. I would recommend having the Courtier may his way there and start infiltrating the locations around the religion's head location. As you get more agent slows, I commonly summon another Supplicant and then a Hierophant to all help with infiltrating and then converting/enshadowing locations. The more Holy Sites you desecrate with Shadow, the more influence you will gain over the world's religions. Your second goal is to enshadow the capital city of the most powerful nation. The religion of that nation should be a religion you've gained control of by enshadowing its center. That will take you about midgame and your god should be getting close to being summoned. Then, it's time to get a little rowdy, but you'll be in a good position. Shadow should be spreading rapidly everywhere as your religions do the enshadowing work for you. As they become enshadowed, you can infiltrate more nations more easily. Wells of Shadow can start going up. Summon the Baroness at a desecrated holy site and have her start wrecking house. If you have a nation fully enshadowed and infiltrated you can summon the Monarch and form a dark kingdom, which will 100% cause humanity to react. If you laid the groundwork, you'll be able to roll over them.
What I like of this game are the different strategies you can use. For instance, I love using the courtier coupled with the warlock or soneone with blood magic. Easy -3 to security of locations (or more if you have heroes in the same spot with the cursed bloodline). And the hierophant can also be used with gospel of envy to disrupt any chance for a kingdom to join the alliance (or start a civil war if you use it on non-capitals). Also, enshadowing a few capitals is a good way to get the chosen one busy to cleanse them instead of doing ANYTHING else (plus they are vulnerable to being attacked by other casters!). Another thing I like to do when I want to change religions behaviours, gain experience with no menace or profile gained or a mix of the two is to influence them. Sooner or later I might try to see if I can get one of my minions be a prophet of a religion and see if it's worth it. Also, building orcs is a little expensive, but they can be a great disruptive force in the late game when the alliance starts acting. Couple them with a dark empire and nobody will be a match. These are the ones I like to use, I am sure there are more. And I surely need to get the hang of the trickster, seems an interesting agent but I can't grasp how to use it properly in practice (currently best I have found is devastate perisphery with it while having heroes gaining menace, and only that).
This game ate a good chunk of my life. Totally worth the payment as I went through and beat all of the currently available gods (at the time Mammon was the most current) on the hardest difficulty. Can't wait for it to leave beta and glad to see others enjoying it.
Coming back to this? Really happy about it, after your last vid I tried playing it, only to find I couldn't finish a run, so can't get another god... Yet played it more than three times to the "end". Would love this as a series, though not sure how much you can do in the game right now
The early access is important to stress. Not because it's incomplete, or buggy, the game is definitely playable and very enjoyable, but because there are regular updates and important mechanics changes fast.
Just wanna say that this was a wonderful video.It was an incredible intro and explanation and your bemusement when discussing the various god personalities was palpable. Viewers can tell you’re really intrigued with this game and that makes a really cool viewing experience. I’m usually not into long strategy games but this one looks super cool. I will say I’m not sure I buy your “it’s actually easy” notion though simply because of the amount of interactions and nuances going on! Definitely wishlisted. Even in its current form it looks super fun and’s a polish of QoL (history/log box instead of pop ups would be 👌) would make it that much better. Thanks for this.
To me, the overwhelming feeling is more from the intense amount of text everywhere. And the fact that sometimes it feels just sorta thrown down in a rather clunky way. Especially in the screens where you choose your god at the beginning.
Lots of games have highly-polished user interfaces on top of crude and poorly-designed gameplay. This is just the opposite of that. ...though to be fair, I agree that the UI definitely makes "immersion" a struggle. Hopefully it's just a placeholder, and a proper UI design will be the _last_ thing before coming out of Early Access, after the gameplay itself is finalized.
Yesss, this is a fantastic game! And honestly if you want a no-risk tutorial, you can always just play Vinerva and just... never put down a plant. If you don't plant any then the chosen one can't do the prophesy and if you turn on unlimited turns you can just have *fun*! Also, a tip that's useful for any run, there's no way for the heroes to remove the 'dark catch' (or whatever the exact name is) trait from a city. So just infiltrate as many docks as possible and do that thing, by the time your actual plan comes to fruition, the heroes will all be busy constantly dealing with madness and shadow from the docks
Great video like always splatt, saw Nookrium play this game a while back. I was wondering if you'll check out Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead now that it has a steam release?
Oh hey I had this game after the first time I watched you play it, it was pretty fun I ended up liking the laughing King more than the others. I'm interested to see how much has changed
@@TrueRandomization no, just the one he’s currently working on. He made some attempts in the past, secrets behind the throne or something, but this is his opus and the price has stayed at $20 for like 2 years now.
Thanks to you i downloaded demo and spend few hours with it. It was great! Sadly it ended at turn 201 but i felt the story :) I will buy the end product when i will get some money :d
i loved the original vid so much, i implemented it into my d&d-based novel WIP where the forbidden gods do ultimately win. it's the longest NaNo i've ever accomplished
@SplatterClatter - out of interest, how many of the games you show us do you continue playing for some duration after? Like, how many do you go back to? Your library must be *ridiculous!* 😂❤
Oh this looks very familiar. I remember there being an old strategy game where you play evil gods, this one seems to be based off that with a bit better graphics.
Same developer who previously developed "Shadows Behind the Throne" and "Shadows Behind the Throne 2". "Shadows of Forbidden Gods" is the direct successor to both their aforementioned titles and is much more polished and refined.
I was looking into buying this just yesterday. also another game you looked at almost a year ago was The Last Spell, and it just came out of early access, so maybe it would be cool if you looked at it again.
Re: Ophanim, it's actually a bit cooler than described. It's not that you can create either a kingdom of darkness or a kingdom of light--it's that you use both! You exploit humanity's fear of shadow to scare them into embracing the "perfection" of your light, which is also a trap.
Mammon is a reference to demonology, like a direct reference. Mammon is the demonology associated with greed, and in this game hes associated with wealth
@@GameTimeWhy It's more..there's a LOT of strategies you can go with every single game. Basically, much of the (early) fun of this game is learning the intricacies and how to play your style as best you can. If you have a hard time, try to focus on what it says your god's strength is (using their abilities and individual talents). Splat, true to form, just did whatever he wanted. :P
@GameTimeWhy It’s definitely "fun hard"! Starting with holy orders off and 12x12 map size you can experience all the mechanics and start winning after a game or two.
be nice if you could create markers or pins. for example when he was looking at heroes for gold. and only 1 had gold. be nice if a pin or something could be put on them so you could keep better track of them.
Lines like "Aw no, dude. What's the Chosen One doing over here? That's suuuuucks" make me really want a tv show or something about an evil overlord who acts exactly like Splatty.
Adventure Time
This is a really excellent game. It doesn't have the typical problem of games like Civ or Total War, where you know you've won the game less than half way through the process. You can lose until you've won - which is how every game should be.
I realized that that is the problem I have with 99% of the strategy games I play...the latter half of the game is just going through the motions to wrap up the game which I sometimes don't even bother cos it gets tedious. thanks to your comment, looks like I have to check this one out for myself. i'm curious to know how they accomplish that.
It's a very interesting approach...basically you act as an agent of entropy in what is a very self stabilising system ...so if you don't plan your approach and break it just right it tends to self repair.
I found a little distraction in the chosen ones homeland (plagues a good and often fairly easy to start one) goes a long way towards having a smooth(er) slide into the apocalypse 👍😋👍😅
Oh it is. The chosen one has literally ripped victory from the jaws of defeat. I got blindsided from the south as the hero charged through orc territory in one of the most protagonist moves ever. I wasn't even mad.
That's a reason why I hardly ever finish my Total Warhammer campaigns, I love the start but at some point when I know I've snowballed enough it just gets boring, like when I can auto resolve almost every battle.
@@zacharyhawley1693 Ah I see you went with the “villain that dies respecting the hero” route 😂
so to recap:
> equip agent with adorable monkey
> befriend enemy heros
> die foolishly
> enemy heros proceed to wreak havoc to avenge your monkey and fool.
jesus christ this game has amazing organic storytelling.
The courtier almost always start being married, so you can have it doing shit all over the place and a hero will defend you from "slander", if you die, they go mad with grieve and attack😂 it's great
The adorable monkey isnt that strong. The thing that makes heroes vendetta are blood ties, which tricksters, nobles and warlocks have with other humans depending on their starting settlement. (Tricksters can also be Elves)
I find Attack Monkey to be the strongest trait for trickster, it lets you hit and run (which is already strong as a tactic) and bootstrap your early game economy/trinket pool. And later on you get to hemmorage dangerous heroes gold supply as the attack monkey can steal up 50 gold a combat, whereas the pickpocket monkey has a cooldown.
Dangerous heroes dont come out of nowhere, follow the money
@@followingtheroe1952 Would the attack monkey not be lost upon your first withdrawl?
@@rutger5000 no he has a unique trait, thats what makes him so awesome
This truly is a boohoo dead wife moment. ⚫️
An awesome and deep true strategy game! One time I had a very successful Orc Warlord with powerful Horde. They constantly harassed neighboring kingdom until humans mobilized and ganged up on them. Great battles were fought near orc fortresses, and my Warlord personally dispatched of 8 heroes, until he was defeated and orcs were dispersed. Then my Warlock Necromancer arrived and raised massive undead armies from the fallen orc and human warriors. After that this human kingdom was utterly destroyed with just a couple of settlements left. In the mean time in the North the biggest kingdom finally embraced the Darkness and turned into a Dark Empire, while the Chosen One was distracted with the Orc and then the Necromancer.
Sounds like something straight out of Warcraft 3 campaign, lol.
Yeah, this kind of story building that this game could provide is amazing. It would be cool if Necromancer would resurrect Orc Warlord too, would make a story even more warcraft-y (especially counting that first Death Knight there was orc too, if I remember correctly)
Awareness is the killer. The Chosen One will usually become aware just before the first seal breaks (imagine them looking at the stars and recalling the ancient prophecy that foretold your return, and naming them as the only one being able to stop the coming darkness). Once aware they will start running around the map to spread the awareness, getting others to not only see your agents' direct actions, but also the larger picture, and thus becoming more inclined to act against you...
The game is a game of balancing awareness with your shadow growth (or gods win condition).
You basically want shadow to grow faster than awareness, a fully aware character will not act against you if they are also enshadowed.
Basically all characters are neutral, shadowed characters are your property, and aware unenshadowed characters are straight up enemies. The pascals wager quadrant is in your favour: 2 good outcomes, 1 bad and 1 neutral
So the economy/balancing act is supporting and growing your enshadowed "friends"/allies. And actively killing/crippling/terrorizing aware enemies. Plot assisinations on aware or soon to be aware rulers, and try to set up the heirs to be enshadowed.
When plotting wars, try to plot them between 2 aware soverigns or a civil war with an aware soverign.
I always go into a game with the perspective of creating a cold war between the planned nations of shadow with the most likely alliance candidates.
So i foster maximum love and order into the shadow nations far from the COs home, and plot absolute chaos and death in everywhere near the COs home.
Not only do you weaken future alliance candidates, but you exploit the chosen ones bias to his home, which will distract him from countering your overall strategy.
Sort of like Sauron bribing and corrupting the Easterlings while plotting to destroy everything near Aragorn.
A big mistake people make when going military is not having a political goal: you need to kill and terrorize aware rulers. A dead population is worth an enshadowed one in score, but more valuable under an aware ruler.
Remember that aware rulers draw funds from the population to fund heroes who act against you.
Isn't that also how My Little Pony starts?
@@followingtheroe1952yeah I know this is 10 months late but holy hell brother… would hate to be on the opposite end of your planning💀
@@Jayyybannzz good thing this aint a competitive game lmao
@@NA-mg2eb How is that kids show relevant tho?
The awareness occurring in the first few turns is from the Chosen One persuading people.
Holy Orders with the wrong tenet can get quite nasty at that, too.
I think the awareness stems from the fact that chosen ones usually receive their info from trusted sources (such as prophetic visions after good drag of a crack pipe) and not from gossiping of nobles and news of the town criers.
In other words, their awareness is supernatural because they, just like your supplicant, are an agent for greater force and those forces can see you even when you haven't done much yet.
@@quint3ssent1a
Hero: “smokes crack”
Hero: I CAN SEE ALL THAT IS WRONG WITH THIS WORLD AND THE EVILS THAT TAINT IT.
Occasionally a hero with odd traits starting off might neglect to spread awareness right away and give your agents an extra head start. Or you can try to intervene early for the same effect.
@@kenjethao7774 don't forget painting a huge sign "THE END IS NIGH" and starting proselytising on streets about all the evil in the world. That's how heroes usually do it.
Love this game, its so good to see the concept of the original "That Which Sleeps" game (which ended up being a scam) brought to fruition in such a comprehensive and inspired way.
I was lucky enough to be there on ground zero when BobbyTwoHands decided "F it, Ill do it myself."
@@Thyrork Based Spite Revenge Story.
The art style of "That Which Sleeps" was awesome. I don't believe the game was 100% a scam from the beginning, rather I think the developer bit off more than they could chew and fled. There was enough of a game shown off in devlogs to know there was something there, but everything interacted with everything else in such a complicated way I doubt he had the ability to make the AI work for a full play through. It's too bad he couldn't at least release the assets.
@@JWar- There were indeed some great ideas and game mechanics in TWS, many of which made it into Shadows of Forbidden gods and were even improved on. I'd agree that it probably didn't start off as a scam but sadly that's exactly the way it ended up, with the dev casually lying through his teeth every step of the way.
I don't think That Which Sleeps was a scam, because that implies malicious intent. I just feel it ended up being a project that exceeded the dev's capabilities and there were problems in the core logic of the game he was unable to solve, and that resulted in him being unable to make it work.
But yes, this game feels very much like what That Which Sleeps was going to be, if perhaps slightly more modest presentation-wise.
This is an amazing game, I bought this after your last video and I come back to it from time to time
And Ophanim plays on good vs evil, as you spread darkness more flock to your banner where they get brainwashed in the name of Light, as a small correction. And his 7 cost ability is massive fun
Same here, Splat is how I base my game purchases when it comes to indie games.
The concept of this game is really cool. It's Cult Simulator that's invaded someone's Fantasy Crusader Kings game.
Except CS has a more elaborate magic system, but that is beaten by having an actual map you can influence here.
You got me into this game, and now I have like 700 hours in it.
Ophanim is my hands down favorite, but sneks fun too.
Understandable, there are a lot of ways you can take an ophanim game, my favorite is mammon but vinerva is a very close second
I also got this game, think it's really cool, but unfortunately lack the IQ to know how to actually play it.
RIP slowboi
@@shemsuhor8763 I've taken a crack at games likes ck 2, vic 2, total war and the guild and managed to do good enough to win. However this game still stumbles me...
Ophanim is the only one where I cannot figure out how to effectively utilise it’s main gimmick. When I won with it I only had a few places under Ophanim’s light and the victory was almost all from shadow and destruction.
Just want to say to everyone this is a pretty cool game and I highly recommend it if the idea of being an evil god and destroying the world appeals to you at all.
It plays a lot like one of those Crusader Kings games but is a lot more simple and less intimidating. Each god you choose varies up the gameplay a lot, and you can tweak it so if a certain mechanic frustrates you you can just remove it (like those wards that make an area uncorruptable). There's also modding that just adds even more value to this game.
I really admire the dev for his ambition considering this is basically a one man show. Hope Splat's vid on him gives him more success.
I have to say, Splattercat, I love these longer form videos. Hope to see more of them.
The amount of depth and flexibility in the strategies you can devise in this game is incredible! Armies, intrigue, sabotage, regicide, necromancy, plague, high risk gardening, exploration, diplomacy, madness, shadow, religion, deep ones, meteors from space, and more!
The structural storytelling and drama as your machinations turn your enemies to heel is riveting and fun!
I was looking for this game for damn weeks now and could not find it because I had no memory of its name. Thank you, man, I can *finally* play it.
47:13
The funny thing is, I know people with this accent, and it made me chuckle nearly to tears listening to this part. Either Splat knows peeps with this accent as well, or is very lucky with the consistency he has in applying it for the bit. Love it.
Oh no the chosen one suuuucks. Dude I feel your pain I just started playing this and it's a riot watching you connive.
The way you described the game in the intro of the video was simply perfect. It was like ear candy. Praying this game makes its way to playstation❤❤
Huh? Doubt it'll go to PS lol
Bruh. Just get a good laptop and hook it up to your TV, you don't have to get a super space eating rig to play a lot of the best games, you're missing out!
This is not a chonky game. I can play this on my tablet. And the devs have been kind enough to provide a demo so it's free & easy to check if you can run it.
I only use a console these days. No time for other devices. Great game. Shame about sonys selection.
Man the first 10 minutes of this video made the game sound so cool but the second I saw the world map my eyes wanted to bleed. True cosmic horror.
The fact you sang that queen song.... dude.. I sing that to myself while I'm driving around delivering a lot and I sit there thinking I'm probably the only person who knows that now! but man... epic soundtrack to an epic movie (Highlander) :D queen are awesome man :)
I bought this game from your last video review of it... It's amazing with unique gameplay and the dev only keeps working on it. Can't wait to see where it goes!
Also thanks for the good rec!
Looks great! Didn't even realize the video was an hour till you said it at the end. I was sad to see the story end.
I was just thinking about this game yesterday but couldn't remember the name of it.
Crazy timing.
I just jumped off a guide reading about this game, and now this video popped up! Very nice!
The hero is always the first one to be aware and others are aware because they believe the hero. Nothing complicated here.
Splat you can’t end it there!!!
I need to see Surgez become the grand orc emperor and the fish people established
Fantastic game I've been playing since you first featured it. Can't recommend enough.
Great to see more of this! I hope you do at least one full playthrough of it sometime.
25:10 - debatable, imo - sometimes heroes make good agents, but as fully enshadowed heroes, they aren't harming you (and may be helping you), and I'm fairly sure (I might be wrong) that when you make a hero into one of your agent, another (fresh and unshadowed) hero is created to take their place (like what happens when a hero is killed). And it still takes recruitment points and an agent slot to do this, so you could have just created another agent normally instead.
32:00 - btw, since you didn't mention it, might be worth noting that there's map filters and stuff that you can use to find said geomantic loci (among other things).
Also, it might be worth mentioning that the game has added mod support since the last time you covered it! :D
Opinion time: I think that Vinerva actually makes at least as good of a tutorial god as She Who Will Feast. Yes, she's more complicated, but she's more complicated in a way that encourages the player to learn the game mechanics - a lot of her abilities work better if used on humans with certain preferences (ie, greedy and cruel people will be more inclined to take your gift of plants that kill peasants and turn them into solid gold), which teaches the player to pay attention to the AI characters' motivations. The game actually tells you what the AI plans on doing, and more importantly, why it plans on doing that thing - it's really cool.
What makes enshadowed heroes valuable are 1 their minions/gold/items give you tempo and 2 their affiliation: note all agent portaits have a border, this is the allegiance of their hometown: tricksters/warlocks/courtiers and warlords will take upon the allegiance of their spawning tile.
Courtiers, tricksters and obviously enshadowed heroes also will have a dynasty that is shared with other characters in the world. These ties are a heavily exploitable resource. Using enshadowed heroes to cause havoc to other nations will cause dynastic vendettas and nation wars. You are basically getting exponential value out of all aggresive/military actions your hero takes
The initial talk about the god and the heros gives me a strong Wheel of Time vibe. I will check it out! Cheers.
Its nice to see this game up on here.
Extra long splat video? Fucking love it
Starting a zombie apocalypse is one of the most fun stuff you can do in this game.
I knew you'd come back to this one. Either because of content updates or you finally weren't stuck as she who will feast
So many bonus points for 'Princes of The Universe'.
I bought the game. I won with every god so far. I'm gonna play some more with specific themes/win conditions in mind.
I've noticed (from my own experience and other's) is that the game is closer to Sandbox than Strategy by a little, which really helps enrich the organic storytelling that stems from such a unique concept and perspective for a Strategy game. I can't wait to try another run.
I just wish there was some actual meta-progression tho. unlock things, level up between games, etc.
Hey Splattercat, I just wanted to let you know that I watched you cover Dredge about 6 months ago so I tried out the beta. I bought the game the day after it came out thanks to you. Great game!
This game looks like a lot of fun! Thank you for making a video about it and I would love to see more videos about this game!
this is great it gave me flashbacks to playing that old god sim Dominions 3
Very intriguing. The map UI could really be simplified using common tricks seen in other strategy games.
For those interested in the game I'd recommend not going with the strategy here.
In general, especially with this god, you want people to not notice you. When people catch on to what's going on, you're essentially sunk.
I commonly summon the Courtier on turn 1. I do this for two reasons: the Courtier is good at infiltration and the longer your agents are alive, the stronger they'll get, because they'll have longer to level up.
I take the perk with the Courtier to reduce security wherever he is. That's very useful.
You want to spread shadow as you infiltrate. Every turn a location with high Shadow will 'leak' some Shadow in to all adjacent locations. So, you want to first infiltrate locations adjacent to your start. That will let Shadow flow flow more easily in to them.
Whenever you successfully infiltrate, Lay Low until your profile bottoms out. You don't want your agents to get killed this early on and you don't want to cause a ruckus that will cause humanity to gang up against you. Don't build any Wells of Shadow now, either. They're too high profile.
Once that is done, you should find all the holy sites and witch covens on the map. Once you infiltrate a witch coven you can always Lay Low there and the witches will help you spread Shadow. Infiltrating a Holy Site will give you some unique options, as well as the ability to summon the Baroness (who kicks all the butt) later.
Next, find out what the largest religion is. Find out where it is based. There will be a large city with a cathedral wherever the religion is based. That is your target. If you can fully enshadow that city you can bend the religion to your will and all its members will fall to Shadow slowly.
I would recommend having the Courtier may his way there and start infiltrating the locations around the religion's head location. As you get more agent slows, I commonly summon another Supplicant and then a Hierophant to all help with infiltrating and then converting/enshadowing locations.
The more Holy Sites you desecrate with Shadow, the more influence you will gain over the world's religions.
Your second goal is to enshadow the capital city of the most powerful nation. The religion of that nation should be a religion you've gained control of by enshadowing its center. That will take you about midgame and your god should be getting close to being summoned.
Then, it's time to get a little rowdy, but you'll be in a good position. Shadow should be spreading rapidly everywhere as your religions do the enshadowing work for you. As they become enshadowed, you can infiltrate more nations more easily. Wells of Shadow can start going up. Summon the Baroness at a desecrated holy site and have her start wrecking house. If you have a nation fully enshadowed and infiltrated you can summon the Monarch and form a dark kingdom, which will 100% cause humanity to react. If you laid the groundwork, you'll be able to roll over them.
What I like of this game are the different strategies you can use. For instance, I love using the courtier coupled with the warlock or soneone with blood magic. Easy -3 to security of locations (or more if you have heroes in the same spot with the cursed bloodline). And the hierophant can also be used with gospel of envy to disrupt any chance for a kingdom to join the alliance (or start a civil war if you use it on non-capitals). Also, enshadowing a few capitals is a good way to get the chosen one busy to cleanse them instead of doing ANYTHING else (plus they are vulnerable to being attacked by other casters!). Another thing I like to do when I want to change religions behaviours, gain experience with no menace or profile gained or a mix of the two is to influence them. Sooner or later I might try to see if I can get one of my minions be a prophet of a religion and see if it's worth it.
Also, building orcs is a little expensive, but they can be a great disruptive force in the late game when the alliance starts acting. Couple them with a dark empire and nobody will be a match.
These are the ones I like to use, I am sure there are more. And I surely need to get the hang of the trickster, seems an interesting agent but I can't grasp how to use it properly in practice (currently best I have found is devastate perisphery with it while having heroes gaining menace, and only that).
@@bardbard196 I personally think that going with the harvester for max trolling early game is still one of my favorite “strategies” to go for
This game ate a good chunk of my life. Totally worth the payment as I went through and beat all of the currently available gods (at the time Mammon was the most current) on the hardest difficulty. Can't wait for it to leave beta and glad to see others enjoying it.
Just bought this game been looking at it for a while and this video was so entertaining and very informative thanks! Would love to see more
There can be only one Splattercatlander!
Coming back to this? Really happy about it, after your last vid I tried playing it, only to find I couldn't finish a run, so can't get another god... Yet played it more than three times to the "end". Would love this as a series, though not sure how much you can do in the game right now
Super interesting and well made
Way above my pay grade but I always enjoy a Splat video where he's into the game he's playing.
Thanks for the entertainment Splat, bye guys...
Eyyy, Highlander reference, love it.
Maaan not often do I just want to keep watching what happens next but this game always has me hooked!
The early access is important to stress. Not because it's incomplete, or buggy, the game is definitely playable and very enjoyable, but because there are regular updates and important mechanics changes fast.
Just wanna say that this was a wonderful video.It was an incredible intro and explanation and your bemusement when discussing the various god personalities was palpable. Viewers can tell you’re really intrigued with this game and that makes a really cool viewing experience.
I’m usually not into long strategy games but this one looks super cool. I will say I’m not sure I buy your “it’s actually easy” notion though simply because of the amount of interactions and nuances going on!
Definitely wishlisted. Even in its current form it looks super fun and’s a polish of QoL (history/log box instead of pop ups would be 👌) would make it that much better.
Thanks for this.
The way you described the Chosen One and your goals makes it sound like you are the Reapers going up against Commander Shepard lol
"Something about brain suckge and eating souls just does it for me"
SplatterCatGaming 2023
To me, the overwhelming feeling is more from the intense amount of text everywhere. And the fact that sometimes it feels just sorta thrown down in a rather clunky way. Especially in the screens where you choose your god at the beginning.
Lots of games have highly-polished user interfaces on top of crude and poorly-designed gameplay. This is just the opposite of that.
...though to be fair, I agree that the UI definitely makes "immersion" a struggle. Hopefully it's just a placeholder, and a proper UI design will be the _last_ thing before coming out of Early Access, after the gameplay itself is finalized.
Yesss, this is a fantastic game! And honestly if you want a no-risk tutorial, you can always just play Vinerva and just... never put down a plant. If you don't plant any then the chosen one can't do the prophesy and if you turn on unlimited turns you can just have *fun*!
Also, a tip that's useful for any run, there's no way for the heroes to remove the 'dark catch' (or whatever the exact name is) trait from a city. So just infiltrate as many docks as possible and do that thing, by the time your actual plan comes to fruition, the heroes will all be busy constantly dealing with madness and shadow from the docks
Looking around for a villain commander game and found this. Thanks for the overview!
This is one of my favorite games
Would really love to see a series of this game dude! Consider doing more episodes of this, my man! Wanna know how it ends! Cheers!
We want more!
Great game! I got it after your first video awhile ago. Keep em coming!
Great video like always splatt, saw Nookrium play this game a while back. I was wondering if you'll check out Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead now that it has a steam release?
Oh hey I had this game after the first time I watched you play it, it was pretty fun I ended up liking the laughing King more than the others. I'm interested to see how much has changed
Ah! Yes... The only word in a game that makes me instantly click on the videos about them...
*Procedural*
*Orgasmic Nerd Sounds*
Dang. I wish you did a full playthrough of this. I was invested. It's a shame the game is as small as it is. It deserves to have a lot more.
This looks like a really fun relaxed game. Looking forward to picking this up.
Nice, it's kind of a mix between eldritch horror, pandemic. I love it! very unique!
This game is fucking amazing! Everyone should check it out and support Bobby. Such an impressive game from one dude.
@@TrueRandomization no, just the one he’s currently working on. He made some attempts in the past, secrets behind the throne or something, but this is his opus and the price has stayed at $20 for like 2 years now.
there really arent enough games that let you play the evil overlord
Thanks to you i downloaded demo and spend few hours with it. It was great! Sadly it ended at turn 201 but i felt the story :)
I will buy the end product when i will get some money :d
I'd love to see you continue this one.
That UI and map look... well they could certainly look better.
This title was written as a fantasy for me.
Bought this on your recommendation. Its great!
That Queen reference made my night 😂
Nice design, this icons from Poneti store?
I picked this up a whiiiile ago, liked it enough and then never went back. Now I need to return again…
You had me at procedural!
Dear Splattercat, thank you thank you thank you.
You need to stop. Yes, I bought this game too.
You're bankrupting me Splat!
i loved the original vid so much, i implemented it into my d&d-based novel WIP where the forbidden gods do ultimately win. it's the longest NaNo i've ever accomplished
I have over 100 hours in this game but that’s mostly because I play the workshop gods. Playing as an all consuming flesh god is the best ❤
Thx for the video!
Interesting concept.
I'm just waiting for a fish god man
@SplatterClatter - out of interest, how many of the games you show us do you continue playing for some duration after? Like, how many do you go back to? Your library must be *ridiculous!* 😂❤
Oh this looks very familiar. I remember there being an old strategy game where you play evil gods, this one seems to be based off that with a bit better graphics.
Same developer who previously developed "Shadows Behind the Throne" and "Shadows Behind the Throne 2". "Shadows of Forbidden Gods" is the direct successor to both their aforementioned titles and is much more polished and refined.
You might also be thinking of Dominions.
I was looking into buying this just yesterday. also another game you looked at almost a year ago was The Last Spell, and it just came out of early access, so maybe it would be cool if you looked at it again.
I do wonder, has Splat has played any of the Dominions series of games?
I love this game
5:24 What's the number? my last supplier of Deep Ones went under due to covid, been looking for a new one.
I love this game, I playe it a couple of mouths ago, now it have some much more
Re: Ophanim, it's actually a bit cooler than described. It's not that you can create either a kingdom of darkness or a kingdom of light--it's that you use both! You exploit humanity's fear of shadow to scare them into embracing the "perfection" of your light, which is also a trap.
This reminds me of waiting for the raven
Mammon is a reference to demonology, like a direct reference. Mammon is the demonology associated with greed, and in this game hes associated with wealth
I've played it after watching your last video, but damn game is too hard :D :D :D
Fun hard? I worry I'll get it and be so bad I don't play.
@@GameTimeWhy The game is challenging, but you can tune the difficulty by changing the map size.
@@GameTimeWhy It's more..there's a LOT of strategies you can go with every single game. Basically, much of the (early) fun of this game is learning the intricacies and how to play your style as best you can. If you have a hard time, try to focus on what it says your god's strength is (using their abilities and individual talents). Splat, true to form, just did whatever he wanted. :P
@GameTimeWhy It’s definitely "fun hard"! Starting with holy orders off and 12x12 map size you can experience all the mechanics and start winning after a game or two.
@@TrentTheWanderer wow, you can do so small map? Nice
If I ever am down I know I can click onto a random splat vids
Damn I wanted to see how this ended!
True fact, the creator made 2 other versions of this game they never finished. One of those was on kickstarter
be nice if you could create markers or pins.
for example when he was looking at heroes for gold. and only 1 had gold.
be nice if a pin or something could be put on them so you could keep better track of them.
Promising...
This is a cool game. I hope it has a release sale.
7:30 Why did you choose 32x32 if the default map is 60x60? Wouldn't 30x30 be exactly a quarter?