Combat is brutal, with great splashes of blood and lumps of meat flying away when you make a successful hit and your characters becoming increasingly bloody as they take damage. Clever use of turn order can help here too as, ala Chimera Squad, you can interrupt or attack an enemy before its their turn. Your characters will then engage in turn-based battle with the enemy. There are even lethal spiked pits that will be instant death for anyone unlucky enough to be knocked into them.
Even the maps are not very friendly, with rough terrain that, in places, will cause damage to your guys as they cross it. Sooner, rather than later, you’ll run into some beasts that want to tangle and the game will switch to the tactical map as you’ll see a tiled map, drawn in drab coloured hexes. The “overworld” map, again hand drawn, is a blighted and somewhat desolate place, dotted with villages, quests to undertake and the odd roving party that could want to cross blades with you. But you’ll always be outnumbered, often heavily so. Urtuk sees you start the game with a small party of three, which can expand out to six deployed into any battle, with more “on the bench”. The lovely hand drawn graphics lend the game a distinct look and some of the more unusual enemies are truly horrific to behold! You’ll also seldom see anything magical as the game comes across as brutal and dark, with an esoteric feel to it. Described as a “low fantasy” world, you won’t find elves, dwarves or even orcs. Set in a mysterious, blighted land that has a post-apocalyptic feel to it. So imagine a game that is somewhat of a cross between Battle Brothers and Darkest Dungeon and I’m sure you’ve pictured a game that’s nigh on impossible with a truly sadistic mind that will make you regret loading it up? But Urtuk: The Desolation, which feels like a cross between these two great games, is actually not nearly as hard as you may expect. Games like Battle Brothers or Darkest Dungeon can always find a new way to kill your best character, to shatter your best-laid plan, or to present a new variant on the most challenging or fiendish enemy. Some games seem to positively revel in the experience of torturing us. Can you imagine anything more painful to endure that the destruction of your elite phalanx of hoplites, the loss of a fleet carrier during the battle of Midway or the death of one of your veteran squad members in a squad-based game?ĭespite the agony of these moments, we keep coming back, determined that this run will see us overcome the enemy, level up the right way and find that missing synergy that we couldn’t’ find last time out. There’s something of the masochist streak that runs through most wargamers.