If you’re a fan of games such as Dungeon Keeper and Overlord, which let you be a villain, another game in a similar vein is coming this year: Iratus: Lord of the Dead. Mixing the morbid charm of Dungeon Keeper with the mechanical flair of Darkest Dungeon, Iratus has you play as its namesake: a necromancer who has risen from the dead to try world domination yet again.
Iratus: Lord of the Dead wears its Darkest Dungeon influences on its sleeves, embracing its specific brand of turn-based combat as you face down pesky heroes in spooky caverns. According to the game’s press release, the game’s strategy will be more complex than other titles:
“Each fight is highly strategic, making every action in a battle matter. Debuffs, minion types, even movement will impact a fight for better or worse… The combat system is designed to avoid repetitive battles that are common to the genre and instead focus on unique strategic experiences and tactical situations that differ as your progress.”
Instead of building your army the old-fashioned way, Iratus has you building your army from fallen enemies. Taking bones and guts instead of gold and weapons, the body parts of defeated enemies can then be used to create monsters to fight for you.
Unfrozen, the team behind Iratus, hopes the game will scratch that strategic itch for its Q2 release in 2018. According to Denis Federov, lead developer at Unfrozen:
“We wanted to create something that was unique but familiar at the same time and so we created a combat system that, on the surface, players will be right at home with but once in, you’ll see things you were expecting and unique twists throughout the mechanics.”
There haven’t been many Darkest Dungeon-esque titles, so it’ll be very interesting to see how Iratus will both follow and disregard that title’s mechanics. What do you think? Does it diverge from Darkest Dungeon enough to be original, or is it just a clone? Let me know in the comments below — I’d love to hear what you think.
