The Lamplighters League can take switch-primarily based approach to the 1930s | preview

Harebrained Strategies confirmed off The Lamplighters League and the Tower at the Close of the World in a preview all through the Game Developers Conference.

Apart from having a single of the longest names in gaming background, the title is one of a kind in its mashup of turn-primarily based combat and its 1930s pulp adventure set in an alternative universe.

Mitch Gitelman, studio head of Seattle-centered Harebrained Techniques, and activity director Christopher Rogers confirmed me the match previous week in a arms-off preview. Gitelman is an marketplace veteran and Harebrained Strategies has worked on titles like the Shadowrun trilogy, Battletech and Crimson Skies. The latter was also set in the 1930s and Gitelman reported he liked the timeframe.

I questioned if it was influenced by Indiana Jones, but Gitelman explained he went again to the unique supply materials in the pulp journey comics of the era. The thought was to produce a loaded narrative along with deep tactical gameplay.

>>Follow VentureBeat’s ongoing GDC 2023 coverage<<

“People say it’s like Indiana Jones or it’s The Mummy,” Gitelman said. “But we went back to the pulp fiction, the primary source materials.”

In the game, you lead a group of heroic scholars in the Lamplighters League whose aim is to stop a tyrannical outrun a sinister global cult called the Banish Court. The cult’s aim is world domination.

Preview

The title features a mix of gameplay styles including real-time infiltration, turn-based tactical combat, and managing a growing team of misfits.

The gameplay looks a lot like Firaxis Games’ XCOM 2, but the setting is completely different. There’s a strategic map where you can select the missions to push the cult back around the world. You can see the three enemy factions and you can launch missions to slow them down. There’s an industrialist, a cult leader and a would-be dictator.

“The game starts off in real time when you are infiltrating the base. As long as the enemies aren’t aware of us we can move to real time,” Rogers said. “There are lots of things to inspect. There are things to pick up. We give glimpses into what the enemy is up to and how it works as a secret Cold War. Some of our characters are aware of the true nature of the world, some are not.”

You can also do missions to sniff out where the enemy treasures are or get more resources.

You control a team of unique, dynamic characters and get to know their signature tactical abilities and roles in the team. You learn their stories and the world they inhabit by taking them on missions — every misfit brings their own style to the fight through unique moves that can turn the tide of combat.

The isometric-view game has multiple stages. You can sneak around and recon the map in a real-time infiltration phase. In that phase, you can use stealth to pick off stragglers quietly. You can position your squad and then go guns hot. Or you can take out the most difficult character at the outset. Each misfit has different tricks and abilities and gear to use.

Once you make contact with enemies, the combat starts and shifts to turn-based fighting. You can move or attack and try to outthink or outflank the enemies. The characters reveal themselves to you during combat, and they banter with each other or otherwise reveal things.

One of the characters was Ana Sofia, a healer armed with a submachine gun. It’s important to position her in a way where she can heal everyone at once in a squad. The characters can do things like get enraged, head butt an enemy, or perform a one-shot kill.

The game has a lot of procedural generation when it comes to the placement of enemies or patrol routes, making the missions replayable. You can hide in tall grass. You can set traps, like tossing a firebomb into a pool of oil. You can distract enemies, but when you go hot, they will converge on you.

When you go hot, the key is to find the right combination of characters to launch attacks that will take out as many enemies as possible. Quite often, you don’t get a one-shot kill, so you have to be careful about enemies returning fire. Explosions can do damage to multiple enemies at once. You can cause enemies to panic and “stress break,” Rogers said.

But the enemies can get reinforcements on a timer and you have to watch out for counterattacks.

“It’s super fun to fight your way out of a situation,” Gitelman said.

If your own agent suffers a stress break, the agent will lose action points for a turn or so.

Coming soon

There’s a lot to learn in the game, but Gitelman said there will be an extensive tutorial.

On the strategic map, you can do missions where you can add to your forces. Over time, you can recruit new allies from the “best of the worst.” Gitelman didn’t give an exact launch date.

Players can wishlist The Lamplighters League today on: Steam, Xbox, Microsoft Store and Epic. The Lamplighters League will launch in 2023.