What happens when the best we as a society have to offer is no longer around when you need them, especially when the fate of the world hangs in the balance? This is the premise of Harebrained Scheme's upcoming tactical strategy game, The Lamplighter's League and the Tower at the End of the World, and it makes for an intriguing set up for the 1930's themed pulp adventure.
Set in an alternate history 1930s, a cult called the Banished Court aims to take over the world. The best have all been wiped out, so the Lamplighter's League has to turn to what Harebrained Schemes' Game Director Chris Rogers calls the "best of the worst" to save the world.
"There's no time to recruit new ones, so we're going with the best of the worst: scoundrels, thieves, assassins, murderers are gonna have to band together to save the world," Rogers tells me during a hands-off demo during the Game Developer's Conference last week.
Like BATTLETECH and the Shadowrun trilogy before it, The Lamplighters League is a real-time, turn-based tactical combat game where players will need to think about team composition, positioning, and using the battlefield to their advantage to come out on top. However, Lamplighters adds a new twist to this formula: a real-time infiltration stage that can help set the battle up to your advantage.
First, though, you need a team. In our demo, we have a few of the "best of the worst" to choose from, including a Nun-turned-machine-gun-toting-healer Ana Sofia, as well as an assassin who used what Rogers says was the "dark side of the occult" to do good, though the order would usually end up corrupted. However, the order, along with the Lamplighters, were all killed in the Great War (World War 1).
It's an interesting dynamic having two people on the same team that, at one time, were two extremes. A nun who abhorred violence finally had to take up arms herself because she was tired of nothing getting done teamed up with an assassin who used violence as a means to an end. These are two of the varied and diverse set of characters Lamplighters League brings to bear.
Harebrained Schemes’ Mitch Gitelman, executive producer on The Lamplighters League took a second to expand upon an idea that also helps to set this tactical RPG apart from the studio’s other titles: characters not units.
Instead of controlling various units on the battlefields, you control these characters. Their backgrounds, history, and personalities all inform how they are used in combat as well as how they interact with each other.
“Chris was talking about characters, not units. One of the things that we do is the character's background informs their gameplay and the gameplay informs the character's background. We actually develop both sort of simultaneously and go back and forth.”
As a result, each character has their own unique traits and abilities, as well as a skill tree to invest into, building the character up as each mission passes.
“[L]earning how to play each character is part of the real fun of the game, because each character plays very, very different than the other ones. And you can see how their abilities really reinforce their character.”
This is seen well in the character of Ana Sofiia, who as mentioned is a nun who abhors violence. As a result, she’s a healer, aiding her comrades in the Lamplighters, only fighting when necessary.
The characters themselves also interact with each other through dialogue both in and out of a mission, adding character to an experience that already looks dripping with style and character. If the announcement trailer is any indication of what to expect, I'm looking forward to the full game just on that style of character development alone.
In addition to their unique skills and abilities, The Lamplighters League also throws another card into the mix. Literally. Each character is able to use what the studio is calling the “Undrawn Hand,” a mystical, mysterious unique set of Tarot cards that give special abilities to characters to use in battle.
This isn’t a card game, but it’s another way to customize your character further, making them more unique and powerful. For instance, maybe you have a melee character, like the hulking, bruising Fedyr. With the Undrawn Hand, you can give him potentially a ranged ability to increase his utility on the battlefield.
“The Undrawn Hand is sort of the Excalibur of [the Lamplighters],” Gitelman explains. “For like hundreds of years, the Undrawn Hand is this deck of blank playing cards. And if someone actually risks themselves for the greater good, then fate smiles upon them, you turn a card over and it reveals what it is and you get these extra abilities.
These cards were stolen by the Banished Court in the Great War, and with each battle, the Lamplighters are taking them back.
After this explanation, we jump into the world map, which the art style perfectly reminds me of an old Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, pulp adventure world map. I love this art style and aesthetic so much, dripping with so much character. From this map, players will choose where they will go to stop the three factions that make up the Banished Court: one aims to summon their powerful Eldritch God, while another is an American Industrialist seeking to exploit the world for all its profit. The last believes in an extreme form of social Darwinism, aiming to wipe out the weak from the world.
The great thing about this map is you can effectively pick and choose the missions you want to do and the faction you want to face off against. The leaders of these factions are actually on the map, so you can even choose to fight them or avoid them for a time.
“Because we’re the commander, we don’t have to fight everything,” Rogers explains while navigating the map in our demo. We can avoid them and escape without having to fight them, or you can choose to fight them.”
In the middle of all this is the other goal of building the ranks of the new Lamplighters. Some missions might see you search for allies to give special access to occult powers as a healer and so on. While you run these missions, the factions grow more powerful, represented by three meters at the top of the map screen.
These meters grow or decrease based on your actions dealing with the faction - or not - and as they grow more powerful they reach a breakpoint. From there, they might get a new unit added to their roster or more passive abilities that can make a fight more difficult to overcome. So you’ll need to balance your goals to bring down those breakpoints, though you can stop the breakpoint from happening by completing a really difficult mission as a saving throw of sorts.
We jumped into a heist mission that sees us attempting to steal a piece of treasure back from one of the factions that has been pillaging Egyptian relics. I love the idea that in order to save the world, we have to heist. With the stage set, the infiltration phase began.
Each fight starts out this way with the player taking full control of the units and, in real-time, exploring the map. It acts as an opening gambit, allowing you to set up your characters, scout the map, and even take down a few enemies before the major fight begins in earnest.
I’m happy to say that the beautiful art style carries over to the action in-game. The 1930s adventure aesthetic shines in each character model, and each environmental object and I really felt like I was watching a pulp adventure book unfold before my eyes.
Each character has their own unique Infiltration skill they can use, such as Anna’s Saboteur Lure which makes noise, pulling bad guys towards the noise where you can take them out with a well-placed sneak attack - or just a hulking smash from Fedyr. Celestine, the assassin, can sneak up behind people to take them down, though there is a limited number of takedowns you can do during the Infiltration phase.
Once you’re spotted, though, the fight drops into tactical mode and the gameplay plays out much like you might be familiar if you’ve played tactical combat RPGs before. Each character has Ability Points that govern their actions, and these are spent to use skills and more.
You can scout the full battlefield using what Harebrained Schemes calls Recon Mode, which lets you canvas the whole battlefield to plan your approach. This gives you the full view of the battlefield itself instead of being limited by a fog of war, which is a touch I love as it just provides more information - and options - to plan an approach.
The environment can also be used to your advantage, such as oil spills that can catch fire, walls that can be smashed, as well as a cover system that helps to ensure your heroes stay safe while moving them around the battlefield.
Recon mode can help identify those environmental boons, as well as help decide which enemies should be focused on first, in case there is a powerful enemy unit that could make life a living hell, or an object on the field of battle that can alter your path to victory. In our case, we had both: a Summoner that can bring deadly scarabs to bear (the unit is a zombified mummy after all) as well as a beacon that brings in reinforcements after a set amount of turns.
Armed with the information, Rogers sprang his units into action, using Celestine’s Signature move, which is a move each character can use once per mission. Celestine’s move allowed her to convert the summoner into an ally, meaning that when the scarabs were summoned a few turns later, they fought on behalf of the Lamplighters.
Rogers then went on to showcase how AP can be spent - which is really any way you want. You can move into position, fire off a few rounds at an enemy, move to a safe spot, and even attack again should you have enough AP. Some characters, like Sofia, can use an ability to give more AP as well, which came in handy when using Fedyr to launch some enemies into a group of foes, knocking them all down for a round.
One of the more unique aspects of combat in The Lamplighters League is this idea of stress. Every time a character is attacked, they gain pips of stress - whether that attack hits or misses. Characters can build up stress till it breaks, giving you - or the enemy - a chance to take them out.
This can be used to help deal with high strength, high HP enemies as well, especially with Celestine who is all about controlling stress according to Rogers. However, if a player character suffers a stress break during combat, they receive a negative card that carries over, indicating they suffered trauma during their last outing. These negative effects will come into play in future missions, with Rogers giving the example of a few statuses that will see characters unable to shoot from cover, so they get a huge penalty when firing from cover.
In motion, The Lamplighters League reminds me why Harebrained Schemes are masters of the tactical combat game. While it’s hard to get a real feel for a game watching someone else control the action, I was instantly reminded of the weeks and months I’ve spent playing games like XCOM 2, The Banner Saga and Shadowrun over the years. Watching Fedyr fling enemies into each other, while Celestine slinked through the battlefield, taking out enemies and controlling them to do her bidding (apparently signature skills can recharge in the right conditions), all while Sofia kept the party upright while still holding her own, it all made me want to just grab the controller and play myself.
I'm also really intrigued to see these characters come to life - and to see more of them. This reluctant group of "heroes" is all that is left to save humanity, but how do they cope with the pressure of that task, a task none of them ever asked for? How does this reluctant band of those who are humanity's last resort come together? I'm eager to see the stories that Harebrained Schemes are able to tell with the canvas they are creating.
From the tactical combat that looks tight and fun to a setting an aesthetic that I adore, The Lamplighters League and the Tower at the End of the World is shaping up to be a game I need to keep my eye on. It’s coming later this year to Steam, the Epic Game Store, Xbox Series X|S, and Game Pass.
