We Touch Games – Thea: The Awakening (PC) Review

Thea:  The Awakening PC review by BoxCatHero of We Touch Games
Genre:Indie, RPG, Strategy
Developer:MuHa GamesPublisher:MuHa Games
Release Date: Nov 20, 2015

Thea is a strategic survival RPG from MuHa Games, a small European based dev company. It is based off of Slavic mythology with a non-linear story set in a dark fantasy world. The Cosmic Tree and the gods have fallen, plunging the world into 100 years of darkness. You and your village were saved by your chosen god and light is beginning to return to the world. At the start of a new game you are prompted to select a god.  Each god has five levels, each with a different perk, and begin with only the level one perk. What’s interesting with this game is that you begin with only two of the eight gods unlocked. You randomly unlock four of the remaining gods simply by reaching level three on any given god. The seventh god is unlocked by beating the game and the eight is unlocked by unlocking the seven other gods.

As I said each god has 5 levels and a perk for each level along with a theme they follow as well.  For the purpose of this review I started with Mokosh the Mother Earth. As her name suggests, her level perks deal with nature. Just starting out, she only gives your people the ability to gather food and items faster (We will get more into that game mechanic later). It progresses to all of your villages having +1 gathering skill at level two and an extra food resource at level three. Now that we have that we have a tease of what the gods can offer, let’s move onto game options and mechanics. After you choose your god you have the option of your starting village being warrior, gatherer, or craftsmen based. You can also choose the difficulty ranging from easy to Godlike. If you want to, you can click the button that says “customize difficulty” and set a custom difficulty, or even change the settings on a base difficulty.

When you begin the game you meet this small demon who starts the tutorial (which you can choose to skip). For the purpose of this review we will not cover the tutorial. It is not that it’s not well crafted, because it does very well at teaching you the basics of the game. You begin the game with five of your villagers in a party outside of the town with hardly any supplies, and four inside your village. Now let us discuss the UI of the world map screen.  As you can see by the image to the right the terrain is divided into hexes. You will also note a counter in the top left which displays the turn number as well as the time of day. One very interesting thing about this that really struck me was depending on the time of day, the visibility around your town and expedition shrinks or expands. On the top right you will see a well-drawn portrait of your god which, if you click on it, it will take you to your god screen. Within this screen are three tabs, two of which shows your victory conditions and the third shows your chosen game settings.

It also has a full-color portrait that was displayed for your god at the selection screen and your progress with the god. Now back to the main map screen we go and right below your gods picture is an information panel that contains information on what you have selected at the moment. If your expedition is selected it will show how many people are in it, the amount of movements allowed per turn, how many turns of food and campfire fuel you have left, and your carrying capacity. Below that is your research and experience trackers, which shows your current amounts and what you need to collect to progress.

Each time your experience fills, each of your villagers randomly gain a stat up based on their class. Each time your research fills you receive a research point to spend towards things on the research panel which we will discuss momentarily. Before we go into the research panel, let’s discuss the other parts of the UI. As seen in the above picture, there are five buttons below where the research and experience counters are, which we will discuss in order from bottom to top. First up is the hide/show resources button which toggles the icon visibility of resources on the main screen. It can also be toggled by simply pressing R on the keyboard.

Next is the group cycling button, which cycles through each group (including your town) that you have active on the map, and can be toggled by hitting the spacebar on the keyboard. The next button is the town button which takes you to the town management screen; this can also be toggled by hitting the H key on the keyboard. Next is your game log key that keeps track of the events you have come across during your game and can be toggled by pressing L. After that is the research panel button which can be toggled by hitting Q. One last thing to note about the main screen is on the top right the map portion information will pop up each turn, including if you received a research point, a stat up, and if enemies are visible to your expeditions, or town.

Now let’s get into the meat of the game which is the city management, card mini game, event system, and the massive research panel. Beginning with city management, this will also include expedition management because they share similar features. With both you can click on them on the main map screen to bring up a radial with several options on it. For the city it would be view equipment, view inventory, manage, and create expedition. For the expedition, things are the same except on its radial it has split expedition, camp, and move. When you camp with an expedition it changes move into break camp and the camp button becomes manage. Also to note, when you move the expedition onto the town square on the map it adds an option on the radial to move it back into the village.

The management screen is exactly the same for both city and expedition with the exception of crafting and construction, which only the city can do. With the screen that opens when you click manage is the village overview which shows you what resources you have available to gather. Also along the left you can click gather, craft, or construct to take you to the production tab for that action where you can assign tasks to the villagers. Now with the inventory tab you can do quite a few things which include, but are not limited to: looking at, destroying, or dismantling any item in your inventory. There are two panels with it, one showing the people and inventory in the town. You could also drag villagers over to the other panel to load them into an expedition party as well. it will also show what equipment they have equipped as well. You can also move fuel for campfire and food as well by doing that you automatically create an expedition.

The next screen is your equipment screen where, by clicking on a character’s portrait on the left to select, you can then drag items from the middle to the right to equip them to that character if the slot is available on that character. Manage supplies, which is the next screen, is where you can select what fuel is burned for camp fires and what food can be eaten. The final screen is where you can manually create your expedition. Next item of discussion is the research panel which is divided into gathering, crafting, and construction.  As soon as you unlock something in the crafting or construction you can immediately craft it in your village. However, the unlocks on the gathering will unlock gathering resources on the main map and cause one of their location to be made known to you.

Now we can get to the best part of the game in my opinion. The thing I loved the most from playing it is the card mini game for events and battles. There are several different uses of the card mini game, but for the review will discuss the one I found myself using the most of, which is the fight version. There is also social hex, intellect, hunting, and more as well. When you trigger a fight, or any challenge, you are presented with a choice to automate it, or make the action yourself. When you choose to do it yourself you are brought to a screen which shows you your hand based off your expedition or village make up. It is split into two sections; your attack hand and tactical hand. Once you begin the round both you and the opponent take turns placing cards until both are out of cards.

With the fight challenge it’s the most dangerous because your characters can die from it due to the fact that any damage they take is reflected on their HP until it is healed by camping, or just passing time. The truly dangerous part about this is progressive wounds that can occur from fights. With your attacking hand it’s simply the better armor/HP and damage you have the more likely you are to win. With tactical it’s all based off your characters skills. It can be used from confusing your enemy preventing them from attacking to giving extra attack/HP/armor to an ally. The fight portion is down in order of what was placed, left to right, does two rounds of battle, and then goes back to showing your tactical and attack hands again before repeating itself until one is out of viable cards. The process is exactly the same, but different stats are used for different challenges.

Okay. So let’s review what we have covered about the game: you have eight gods, each with unique benefits and play styles, a wonderfully crafted event and card mini game to add meat to the game, and a robust crafting and research system that adds dimension to the game and give you better chance of finishing it. Additionally, it features an exceedingly well drawn map, turn counter, character portraits, and just lovely artwork in general. Honestly I have no complaints about this game at all. I could not find anything bad about it. So if you love games of this genre, and even if you don’t, I suggest giving it a try. I am reasonably sure that you won’t be disappointed.

BoxCatHero gives Thea: The Awakening a Drastik Measure 9.0 out of 10.0 (90)