Solium Infernum Preview | Hands-On
I feel like I’ve been launching with this preamble a lot lately, but I’ve never been much of a PC gamer. What has then followed quite often has been praise for something associated with the PC gaming experience, from games to key peripherals, and in 2024, PC gaming has scored another early win with me because, with thanks to League Of Geeks, I’ve had the chance to check out the reimagined Solium Infernum. From the multiple hours I’ve now spent with it, along with a comprehensive presentation from League Of Geeks co-founder Trent Kusters, I’m quickly coming to the realisation that Solium Infernum might be the 4X game for me, and many millions of others out there too.
It all begins with the tone of Solium Infernum which embraces the explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate phrases that underpin the 4X sub-genre title. Still, it really wants you to get to the extermination phases as fast as you can, and it emphasises this immediately through the selection of archfielns, and their eagerness to get on with the warring. Players can select one of eight archfiends, from the anything-but-angelic Andromalius to the greedy Mammon, and the newly introduced insectoid monstrosity, Beelzebub. Each have their unique ways to obliterate their peers as they strike out with the goal of conquest. The goal of being the next ruler of Pandamonium feels oh so close, oh so achievable, and yet in reality, it is so hard-earned and so far away.
With the goal being to accumulate the greatest amount of prestige to push your claim as the rightful head of Pandamonium, players will need to fight, lie, manipulate, and generally be awful to one another, but in a very controlled, considered and calm way. A single game of Solium Infernum can be made quite short, wherein it can be completed within a few hours, or, span for weeks and months on end. Matches are asynchronous, and with each turn only playing out in full once all members of the match have submitted their moves, offered tributes, tossed insults at one another (yes, these serve a purpose!), enter auctions to bring in valuable assets for the wars to come, and more. In any given turn you will have up to five other players all independently making their own moves, enacting their own strategies, and making their own pitches to others to sway them to play the game their way.
It can be a bit paralysing as you consider every possibility so it’s a good thing that time is on your side. Rulesets can be established to ensure that if someone is taking too long that their turn is skipped, ensuring that the game isn’t brought to it’s knees by one inactive participant. It also allows for matches to be completed in multiple-hour sessions or in bursts of minutes per day as you make your move and check-in the next day to see what the outcome was.
Solium Infernum’s re-emergence is positioned to be a game that speaks to the fans of Civilisation, just as much as it speaks to a fan of the dark tones of Diablo. The complexities run extremely deep, and the levels of strategy, deceit, and paranoia that infect the players’ minds will have no bounds, but I just couldn’t help but be impressed by what was playable, and as someone who wasn’t overly well versed in the genre, it was heartening to have Trent’s presentation assure me that I do in-fact understand the systems pretty well, despite still having a long road ahead of me before I could at all consider myself proficient.
Hellentine’s day nears, and I’m ready to meet it head on.
