"Shadows of Forbidden Gods" sounds like it will be extremely my jam, so I tried it out last night. It's an Early Access turn-based strategy game in which you play a (slowly-waking) dark god whose Agents are working to corrupt the human world. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1741640/Shadows_of_Forbidden_Gods/
You move the Agents around a hex-based map containing farms/villages/cities and command them to incite unrest, disrupt food production, cause strife between nobles, and set up Wells of Shadow, which spread corruption.
I played the tutorial and ~90 min of a first game. I really like the concept and I think I like the mechanics. I'm honestly not great at strategy games despite the fact that I enjoy them, so take my upcoming list of struggles with a grain of salt. 😅
Different Agents have different abilities: some focus on social sabotage among rulers, some on hassling the Heroes that oppose your work, and others on more direct city infiltration and corruption. There were a few times where I made an agent with a particular focus, but then couldn't really find where I could use their actions effectively (or at all!).
But as you gain notice from rulers and their Heroes, they'll start to undo your corruption work.
It wasn't immediately clear to me if I should have focused up on disrupting Heroes—in part because finding where to use those more social agents' actions was most difficult—but social Agents also need bodyguards, which require money and being in cities, which are high-security.
It's a whole chain of setup that I flubbed in that first play. I'll definitely try a different approach next time.
Most of the important actions took a long time (13-20 turns), which was partly a result of me not focusing my skill points correctly, but partly also just the challenge of the game.
Every 10 turns, an Event happens that typically sets back the work of one of your Agents by a couplefew turns. That's rough on a 20-turn action. That extra time lets Heroes catch up to you to attack, or for rulers to notice you and put anti-Shadow shields up that undo your work.
There are some things that are still a little rough in the UI right now. Clicking to select Agents on the board actually selected the adjacent hex half the time. The autosave process unselects what you're in and changes the zoom. Sometimes when I hit "space" to end my turn, I actually changed the action my Agent was doing. 😒 Some additional clarity around where I can use certain agent actions would be nice, too.
All of that said, I'm 1000% going to keep trying this game. 🤩
