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The Lamplighters League pilfers from the finest strategy games around, and it’s utterly thrillingRelight my fire
Relight my fire
Image credit:Paradox Interactive
Image credit:Paradox Interactive
The Lamplighters League - Announcement TrailerWatch on YouTube
The Lamplighters League - Announcement Trailer
These Lamplighters aren’t your ordinary batch of heroes, however. As publisher Paradox Interactiverevealed earlier this month, you’re working with “the best of the worst” in this grid-basedstrategy game, as the best of the best were all biffed to high heaven in World War I. As such, you’re bringing together a band of thieves and bandits, balancing the need to recruit new people to your team, find allies to help you get more resources to go on off-screen search expeditions, and stealing each faction’s precious treasures in a series of well-planned (or chaotic) heists in order to sabotage their world domination plans.
Your hideout will gradually become busier and more crowded as you recruit more agents in the field. |Image credit:Paradox Interactive
In my preview session, we had the aforementioned Fedir, warrior nun healer Anna Sophia, and cult assassin Celestine who, rather likeHard West 2’s Flynn, uses dark magic for the greater good, albeit at a cost to herself. Naturally, each character has their own abilities and individual skill trees to dig into, but you’ll be able to give them special bits of gear and consumable items to help them in battle. So far, soXCOM-like. But the real kicker comes in the form of 40 tarot cards that can be used to give your heroes unique abilities and passives, allowing you to “put together your way of playing,” says Rogers.
Missions being in real-time, giving you space to roam the procedurally generated map (as long as you remain undetected, that is), get a lay of the land and plan your combat attacks. It calls to mind Mimimi’s stealth strategy gamesDesperados 3andShadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun, but Rogers tells me “this plays a little bit looser than that” and that it won’t be “quite as punishing” (although try telling that to Fedir). “You’ll make mistakes, kind of recover and play through the tactical stuff,” he says. “Our stealth gameplay is more like the opening gambit.”
“A lot of the world is procedurally-generated,” says Gitelman, “so we’re not exactly sure what’s about to happen. Sometimes different enemies will appear, different enemy group sizes, different cover, different pick-ups, things like that.”
The Undrawn Hand lets you add special tarot cards to each character build. |Image credit:Paradox Interactive
The size and type of an enemy group is only one part of the puzzle, though. Each enemy also has their own individual armour and stress levels, which you’ll need to break both of to do mega damage. Some of the guards onscreen have an armour of 18 or 20, so we already know they’re going to be tough to takedown, but stress is only accumulated when they’re attacked - and when they reach maximum stress, they’re effectively staggered for a turn so you can really lay into them. You’ll need to be careful, though, as the same rules apply to you, so you’ll need to keep your weaker characters out of harm’s way behind a plentiful supply of full and half-height cover.
If one of your party does get stress broken, however, then they’ll pick up a card that has a negative effect. “The idea is that that last mission was too much for them and they picked up this kind of traumatic effect,” says Rogers. “A character might become reckless and they’ll not be able to hit anything unless they’re out of cover. Or they might become cowards. They all have gameplay effects, and they’re pretty bad. You can choose to fight with them, like they’re working through it, and you’ll get a reward. Or you can rest them for a little bit and the card will go away.”
The little detailsThe creation of Lamplighters' ten agents was a close collaboration between Harebrained Schemes' designers and narrative teams. They started with some basic tropes - “We need a big sort of bruiser guy, right?” - which the narrative team then fleshed out with back stories - “What if he was a Russian mob enforcer who’s covered in scars?” Those concepts then go to the designers, who build on them further - “What if, when he gets enraged, he can deal more damage and stuff like that.” It’s the “little details,” Rogers says, that allow the design team to turn them into mechanics, “and that’s cool as hell. It’s one of the reasons why creating our own IP allows for that.“Image credit:Paradox Interactive
At first, these break cards make me think of thescars you can gain in XCOM: Chimera Squad, which lets you turn negative effects gained in battle into more positive traits for your veteran soldiers through additional training. But it sounds like there’s going to be a bit more risk-reward at play in Lamplighters, with players having more agency over how they decide to proceed. “If a character can’t take good shots because there’s a big penalty to shoot from cover, it’s up to you. Do you want to go out there and stand in the open and take good shots? Or do you just have to carry that character through to the next mission?”
None of Rogers' characters have such a debilitating effect in this mission, but he chooses to keep all three out in the open for a surprisingly long time, using long-range attacks to gradually chip away at enemy health bars as they descend from all angles. The first order of the day is for Celestine to possess a super strong mummy monster, turning one of the most powerful enemies on the board to our advantage. There are two percentages you’ll need to be aware of when firing off attacks - the first is your chance to hit, and the second, golden figure is your chance to crit, Rogers tells me, the latter of which is resolutely stuck at zero for most of the encounter’s opening salvo.
But Celestine is a character whose entire deal is to pile on stress, and with Fedir drawing all punches and bullets into his brawny chest, she’s then free to deal out her debuffs from behind. Anna Sophia’s SMG, meanwhile, lets her attack twice in the same action point - a blessing when normally each character only gets two per turn. And even when she misses, the enemy’s stress meter still creeps a little bit higher.
The Lamplighters League - Gameplay First LookWatch on YouTube
The Lamplighters League - Gameplay First Look
But if you stick to The Lamplighters League’s default pair of action points, you’re missing out on half the fun. Much likeMarvel’s Midnight Suns,Gears Tacticsand other recent strategy greats, what you’re really driving at in Lamplighters is what Gitelman calls “the big turn”. That is, stretching your well of action points as far as they’ll go in order to maximise the number of attacks you can perform each and every turn.
Anna Sophia, for example, currently has a rare relic equipped that gives her another AP every time she heals somebody. Combine that with her once-per-mission signature ability for a massive AOE heal, and you’ll be positively rolling in the stuff if you get everyone within range. Rogers says this relic is something players will have to “work really hard for” in the final game, but in this instance, it’s just the ticket he needs to let him perform another heal on our friend Fedir, who’s been knocked down after taking too much damage in the unexpected fire breakout. Fedir himself also has attacks with various secondary effects that kick in when he’s properly enraged, such as allowing him to heal for the amount of damage he puts out. But here Rogers has also given him a special tarot card that lets him heal even further.
Together, Rogers manages to get himself out of a pretty tight spot, but the fun’s not over yet. This particular map has also spawned a reinforcements tower, which is about to send in another wave of enemies to the fray. Luckily, Anna’s signature heal has also recharged Fedir’s throw, allowing him to knock down a bunch of stragglers for another turn to help keep them at bay. This opens up a stress break for one of them, and Rogers' eyes light up.
“Okay, this is really great because Celestine, she - " He stops, realising he’s one AP short of being in range to execute his plan. “Whatwouldhave been really cool about this,” he laughs, “is that Celestine’s signature [Coup De Grace], because she feeds on stress, we could have recharged her signature if we could get to that guy and keep the big turn going. As it is,” he sighs, “sometimes I think you don’t want to overthink it too much and you just want to start shooting.”
Agents can move around in real-time when enemies aren’t aware of them, but battles will ensue the moment they’re discovered. |Image credit:Paradox Interactive
It’s not looking good for Anna right now, though, as one of the reinforcements that have just arrived is a magister, who can summoneven moreenemies if they’re not dealt with quickly. “We’re doing great. This is going to be fine,” Rogers says frantically. Gitelman suggests possessing the magister, but once again Rogers is too far away right now. “If I wait a turn, I’m not sure I’m going to get another one!” he despairs.
Alas, before Rogers can plan his next move, my own curse of another upcoming GDC appointment kicks in and I have to leave before I can see the mission through. Rogers still has eight enemies to take down when I depart, and I get them to promise to tell me how it pans out. Incredibly, most missions have two of these big encounters, according to Rogers, and I’m left wondering how on earth he’ll get through the next one unscathed, if indeed he manages to emerge victorious from this first one. Admittedly, this particular mission is from “deep” within the game, hence its difficulty, but there’s a potential third battle on the cards here as well thanks to a free-roaming boss character. These are known as Scions, and you’ll encounter them multiple times throughout the game. To begin with, you’ll most likely want to run away from them given their superior strength, but if you manage to defeat them, they’ll be removed from play for a while. “When they come back, they’ll be stronger,” says Rogers. “And they’ll remember you,” adds Gitelman, revealing a light,Nemesis System-style twistto make fights feel more dramatic on the second go.
Very well played, sir. |Image credit:Paradox Interactive
