Solium Infernum News

Hello Archfiends,

It's official - we debuted our first look at gameplay during IGN's Fan Fest just a few days ago!

Here you see a quick look at how the board plays out, some sneak peeks into the UI, and of course you see more Archfiends! We'll be diving into the details of those characters in the coming months, and we're looking forward to being able to show more of the game at the same time.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As mentioned in our recent Dev Blog, we'll be opening up for Technical Previews in the coming weeks and months. If you're keen to be a part of it, make sure you join us in the Official Discord!

See you in Hell,

The LoG Team 🔥

Archfiends and Vendetta Holders,

Dante wrote that Hell is nine layers deep, each one worse than the next. All of them an open, gaping maw of a unique hellish landscape waiting to inhale the most devilish of humanity.

We take Dante and raise him: Wrapping Boards.

We’re taking Hell’s hexes (the digital kind, not the magical kind) and wrap them around themselves for all eternity. Why stop at nine layers, Dante, when we could go on forever?

That’s when we started hitting walls.

Maybe Dante was right to stop at nine layers.



…

Hi there, I’m Ty Carey, Co-founder & Creative Director here at League of Geeks. I’m also the Game Director on Solium Infernum, LoG’s revival of an old, much-loved cult classic strategy game.

Over the past year, we made significant progress in fleshing out the next generation of Solium Infernum. All games are difficult to make - hard enough that you’ll want to be crazy to try - but strategy games have interesting development problems that are unique to the genre.

A good example is; how do you get a feel for your strategy game, when developing all those complex interlocking systems might take the majority of your dev cycle? In other words, strategy games tend to come together in the final stretch of traditional game development.

And you might argue even more after launch.

Not only does this mean you must factor time into a schedule to play-test a finished game, but it presents further challenges. For example, selling a game takes a lot of marketing - you can make the best game in the world, but unless people know and are excited about it, it’s unlikely to succeed (especially a multiplayer game!).

Marketing requires being able to demonstrate the game you’re selling as early as you can to build an audience, and to sell the experience. Knowing that strategy games only come together late in their dev cycles … I’m sure you can see the issue.

[h2]And so … Solium Infernum’s Technical Demo[/h2]
This year we’ll be asking people to join our first Technical Demo. The technical demo will be rough around the edges and likely imbalanced, but having the game tested in your hands and the feedback we receive helps us understand and focus on the areas of the game that really need it.

If you were interested in partaking in Solium Infernum’s Playtesting, join the League of Geek’s Discord Server – you’ll receive regular news, updates and be able to discuss all things SI there.

You’ll also be the first to know when the first round Technical Demo kicks off.

Some of you have expressed keen excitement to help out with this game, and aside from playing it and providing us with feedback, the other critical thing is to help champion the cause. As early fans and cult followers, you know all the potential that this game has - otherwise you would of course not be here right now. Perhaps you’re part of our Discord group, or perhaps you have Wishlisted this game in hopes it scratches an itch you’ve held for a while.

The best thing you could do for our team right now is to share what we’re doing with the people you know will be interested. Whether they are long-term fans of SI, or complete beginners, everyone is welcome to join up in our playtesting rounds.

Your accomplices and yourself can find more information by joining our aforementioned Discord Server.



[h2]Looking Ahead to a New Harrowing Experience[/h2]
Solium Infernum is the sum of complex interlocking mechanics and systems, where the player’s experience truly emerges when these mechanics combine with the game’s aesthetics. Within our Game Design process, we’ve been using a kind of beneficial simplification while re-imagining what Solium Infernum would look like with current development tools.

There’s something special about Solium Infernum that you risk undoing when you pull it apart and reassemble it - even with the best intentions. You may accidentally find yourself dabbling in the black arts. Counter-intuitively, the strange quirks and perceived flaws may actually be some of the ingredients that gave it its X-factor in the first place.

This means we’re looking for the most obvious forms of friction, confusion, or complexity and seeing if there’s a smoother method - looking through a modern design lens utilizing an additional decade of game theory that has passed since the original Solium was released.

Ultimately, you can pre-empt and predict a design to the best of your ability, but you will never be able to understand the true experience until you’re playing a (near) complete game. What is on the player’s screen is – truly -- the only thing that matters.

The new Solium Infernum will have its own unique feel - it won’t be exactly the same as its predecessor. It will be different, but that’s okay. Not knowing exactly what that feeling is going to be is actually exciting.

These kinds of beneficial simplifications are flush throughout the design; the UI is massively upgraded to modern game standards, information is far easier to access (there were no tooltips in Classic SI, only a gigantic PDF manual!), and Praetor Dueling is currently being massively overhauled, keeping the tension while simplifying the amount of time required by the player to program moves.



In classic Solium Infernum, you would only see the outcome of your Orders as returned reports. Now, you are able to see them play out after you push “End Turn”. This alone changes the way the game feels, and presents some interesting problems - for example, being able to determine who did what on the map by observing turn orders - in a game of secrecy this is bad news! We’ve had to work at finding creative solutions to these unwelcome surprises.

Solium Infernum is about difficult decisions and a certain paranoia…

… There should be enough complexity that you should be worried that you may have miscalculated your plans or that of your opponents …

Legion battles still involve comparing Ranged, Melee, and Infernal ratings of a Legion in battle (along with any other factors), but we remove complexity by only having one ‘round’ of battle (in Classic SI a battle lasted two rounds, meaning even more mind-maths).

Then we have the greatest Devil of all… Wrapping Boards.

(It turns out making a seamless GIF is just as hard)

[h2]The Infinite Game Board[/h2]
The infinite board is a feature carried over from the original Solium Infernum that's surprisingly novel and infernally wicked. The beauty of it is that there are no safe sides in hell, you can’t back yourself into a corner - you’re exposed on all sides. You always have to factor in all directions into your strategies (unless of course, you've conquered all land across the map, in which case your empire wraps around itself!). This is a wonderful mechanic that not only emphasizes the nature of eternal hell but hasn’t been seen as a game concept quite in this way before.

But what seemed like an easy win … wasn’t.

I asked Matt, engineer extraordinaire condemned to make this system work, to describe the challenges they faced:

“The infinite board is a surprisingly tricky system to implement. At first, it sounds simple, but as soon as you start working on it all kinds of Gremlins pop out. For example, visible terrain seams along the "edges" of the board, have been a persistent problem. Pathfinding across board edges also presents a challenge and can result in troops marching all the way across the world, in the opposite direction, to reach the hex next to them. In addition to these, the infinite board feature can cause issues with camera movement, UI, audio and visual effects, not to mention the need for a bunch of custom rendering systems.”

No two games are alike when your board is procedural (it’s still hexes!)

We’re really proud of where the repeating board has ended up. Not only does it repeat seamlessly as you scroll across the ashen wastes, but it’s completely procedural nature means each game will be totally unique. The map is constructed with hexes, but it’s so seamless that unless you turn on the grid overlay you wouldn’t know it …

Of course, understanding the complexity presented by Solium Infernum, we will explore each of the items brushed over in this Developer’s Log in greater detail in the future… But for now, hold faith that even given any changes and difficulties, the game we know and love is still there.

We’ll go into each of these features further down the line in future events and Developer Logs..

As I mentioned before, if you wanted more regular updates, I highly recommend hopping into the League of Geeks Official Discord Server right here 👉 Click me!

But for now…

See you in Hell,

Ty.

Hello LoGers!

Exciting news to kick off the new year; I'm here to introduce you to some recent and not-so-recent additions to our publishing team!

We have...

• Kelsey (kindofsquishy), our Publishing Producer
  
• Chan (log_chan), our Community Manager
  
• & Sarah (wolfey_11), our Community Content Manager
  

We ask that you give them all a massive warm welcome!

Naturally, you'll now be seeing a lot more activity in the community from us, not just on our upcoming two new titles, but Armello too. Including the much requested return of streaming, so watch this space!

While Kelsey and I will be more ninja & behind the scenes, Chan & Sarah will be frequenting our Steam Pages with updates, announcements + comments.

They'll be managing Armello, Solium Infernum AND Jumplight Odyssey, so if you have any questions regarding any of our titles, just give 'em a holler!

Also, feel free to hop into our new Discord Server, where you can hang out with everyone in real time. You can do that by clicking right... here.

Hi there, I’m Ty Carey, Co-founder & Creative Director here at League of Geeks, and Game Director on Solium Infernum.

Back in the before times - we’re talking a long time ago, like, a decade or more - an AAR (After Action Report), was posted to Rock Paper Shotgun called Gameboys from Hell. The culprits responsible were Kieron Gillen and 'Quinns' Smith, both games journalists, and their two colleagues, who were reporting turn-by-turn on a strange demonic wrestling match set in hell. This game was called Solium Infernum, an obscure and intensely hex-based game of political machinations and archfiends vying for the Throne of Hell, by the legendary solo dev behind Cryptic Comet, Vic Davis.

The article was compelling, laced with Machiavellian shenanigans and terrifying decision spaces, so I grabbed a copy of the game from Vic’s own website (Steam existed at that time, but it wasn’t to be found there; a very quixotic move, even for 2012). I came for the intense strategy mechanics, but the infernal world-building actually grabbed and held me. The pure gumption of the copy-writing, being so unapologetically esoteric. The squintable artwork, the darkly bizarre world presented through miniature windows. And an austere, repeating map that truly meant that Hell was eternal. I’d always loved the mythology of Angels, especially the far cooler fallen types. I still have a copy of Gustav Davidson’s A Dictionary of Angels on my shelf, purchased back in 1994, and I loved Barlowe’s Inferno, plus anything horror-related (Constantine, Hellboy, Hellraiser, etc).

The Underworld was where it was at.

Solium Infernum Classic - back when using your imagination was mandatory

There’s a lot to say about your first encounter with the classic Solium Infernum. Most rational folks bounce off it fast, clutching at their own sanity. An impenetrable modal interface, rough-as-guts user experience, the general old-school clunky-ness. Written by Vic in Lingo, the Macromedia Director language that powered the interactive CD boom of the 90’s, and which by the late 2000’s was very deceased - Even the underlying heart of the game seemed necromantic. Lingo was written by John Henry Thompson, a fascinating story regarding the fusion of art and code, in itself.

But there was something there, underneath. A Charm. Perhaps the allure of something forbidden. The game offered a dark promise - an unlikely strategic and political experience, something rarely delivered in mainstream games, especially in the nascent digital board game space. Inaccessibility and complexity were a siren’s call to those with more … eclectic tastes. As my fellow co-founder Blake later coined, it was a diamond in the dark.

Way back then I was toying with ideas for Armello, before League of Geeks had properly formed. Each week the co-founders of LoG - that is Trent, Blake, and myself - would meet up on Fridays, eat pizza, and set up a paper prototype (each of us would take turns constructing and printing out a new iteration over the previous week). Armello had a rough shape and was a bit of a classic wargame between animal clans, but even at that stage, we were aware it lacked a personal story and focus.

Armello - beers and prototypes, the perfect way to end a week

There was an overlap with Solium Infernum that excited me, and opportunities to learn from it. Both Armello and Solium Infernum were digital board games of heroes (of sorts) trying to claim the throne. In Solium Infernum, the ‘central’ place of control is the capital of hell, Pandaemonium. Capturing it by force is a good option if you couldn’t win by prestige. I’m sure - although my memory is legendarily sieve-like - that Armello’s central castle, home of the King, likely originated from this idea.

There was probably more.

Having some spare time again after Armello launched in 2015, I conjured up all sorts of strange ideas for Solium Infernum, because I couldn’t let it go. I made prototypes of a card game (I’m not even the only team member who’s done this for Solium!), and even a role-playing game. They weren’t great, but my heart was in the right place. I noticed on Vic’s blog that he’d left game development for board game design (something he didn’t take to and quickly abandoned for writing fiction, and publishing his own books), so I decided to send what might be the only fan email I’ve ever written, and generously, as is Vic’s way, he wrote back.

Gaps between our emails could last years, but there was a long-term rhythm. I casually snooped around Solium Infernum’s license (at one point it was with a board game company, but sadly didn’t get made), my plan was to slowly and very carefully position myself to one day pop the big question; ‘I love your game - can I remake it?' That doesn’t sound like a hard subject to breach, but I’m classically polite and didn’t want Vic to think there was anything wrong with his own baby. Which was perhaps a needless concern.

As it turns out, in 2020-2021 League of Geeks was looking for our next project, so I boldly offered the question and discovered Vic was totally on-board, with no hesitation. I presented the idea to my co-founders at our annual retreat where we used rituals and scrying pools to divine the future, and as far as I could tell, the pitch seemed to land. I set Blake up on a single-player game and watched as the inevitable process of clawing through Solium’s difficult UX commenced. His grumbles eventually made way for evil overlord laughing which only ended around 3am.

There were a number of factors that helped; an existing design that meant we wouldn’t start from scratch, obvious areas of improvements we knew we could make, a scale appropriate for the team, a fascinating back story regarding Solium’s development and history, a small but loyal fan-base, and the opportunity to create a strategy title in an underutilised setting; Hell itself.

Early concept art for pitching Solium Infernum to partners, by Adam Duncan

The nuts and bolts of getting a game made are pitching, contracts, funding, and licenses. Although it’s a journey of exciting ups and downs, it’s generally not too much of a fascinating story for a blog. Needless, we created a pitch with help from our Art Director, Adam Duncan, and sold the idea to our friends at Kowloon Nights, who agreed to co-finance the project with us (not as the publisher - we prefer to do that ourselves). We negotiated the sale of the Solium Infernum IP with Vic, who then gave us his full unholy blessing. Trent even had the chance to visit Ohio to talk and record Vic’s story, something that we’ll likely share in some form in the future.

It’s been a good decade since Solium Infernum manifested. It never really left, in many ways, inhabiting the shadowed corners of my imagination. I’m immensely excited to have the opportunity to bring it to a wider audience; swelling the forlorn, ashen plains of the abyss with screaming souls, once again.


See you in Hell,

Ty.


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If you've made it this far, thanks for following along. I intend to share more posts like this, detailing the development process as it unfolds and exploring the unique challenges the privilege of re-imagining a cult classic like Solium Infernum for new (and old!) audiences holds.


For now, you can join the League of Geeks Discord community for all the infernal news and discussion.

For those who have undying questions about the future of Solium Infernum, we'll be hosting an AMA on the League of Geeks Discord on Thursday 24th of November at 10pm GMT, 2pm PST and 9am (Fri) AEDT.


P.S. You can support us and our re-imagining of Vic's "diamond in the dark" by Wishlisting Solium Infernum on Steam, if you haven't already. Wishlisting tells the all-great Steam algorithm that people like what they’re seeing and gets us in front of more eyes.