A grand strategy game, in which you take the role of an ancient evil, come to destroy the empires of humankind. Initially weak, you work by sowing dissent in a complex political environment, taking over a low-ranking noble and working your way up. Play factions against each other, and support dissidents to provoke civil wars, all the while building up your forces.

An Open-Source sequel to a previous game, with a new focus on playability and coherent, polished gameplay. Repository available at:

https://github.com/AlexanderWild/ShadowsBehindTheThrone

Note: This game is under development, and this current build is the very first, still lacking a variety of features before it can be considered "feature complete". Early release in order to get feedback, should anyone have any.

Gameplay Overview



The world simulates a set of nobles, all with their own aims and interests. They existing in societies, and vote to achieve their ends. By proposing votes, and voting strategically, you can manipulate them into failing to respond to the true threat, your slowly-developing hidden forces.

Set silversmiths against wine-makers, while subverting coastal villages to build an army of Deep One fish-people, waiting to storm the surface. Rally your kingdom against another, while supporting dissident nobles in the other in order to provoke civil war, weakening them such that they make easy prey. Grow horrific fields of fleshy limbs and gnashing teeth to terrify the nobles into failing to realise that your enthralled noble is slowly converting them from within into dark cultists.

Video tutorials!



We've recorded a couple of videos showing an overview of the game. The first is intended to give a rough beginner's guide to the game (at least the version 1 of the game). It's a bit long, but hopefully it could help beginner players to get their bearings, and to show the community how we regard the "classic" gameplay (of course any strategy that works is a valid strategy).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tLD1XV9LeU



The second looks at the newly (at time of writing) introduced feature: agents. Covers a basic start using agents and discusses the gameplay elements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQYsR7_hR4







Credits



Development by

Alexander Wild, Wyatt Lindquist, Tasneem Solie

Main screen art by Derek Restivo

Controls

Mouse + Keyboard.

Mouse handles camera panning, selecting (left to move/inspect, right to select), menu button clicking.

Keyboard camera panning through WASD or arrow keys, map-view lenses bound to number keys



Mouse wheel or z/x keys for map zoom

Minimum specs

Minor.

2D graphics and turn based nature require little in the way of CPU or GPU power. Prefer screen resolutions of 1366x768 or above, but tested and functional on lower. Memory footprint around 200meg.

Development



Hopefully development will continue as the other project did, although at a slower rate. New versions will come out, and community feedback (should you wish to provide any) listened to and accommodated if possible.

You are welcome to view the source code for your own purposes. Should you wish to go further and fork or submit a pull request for the project, please contact the authors to discuss such matters.

