GDC 2023: The Lamplighter's League Brings Pulp Adventure Style To The Tactical Combat Genre
What happens when the best we as a society have to offer is no longer around when you need them, especially when the fate of the world hangs in the balance? This is the premise of Harebrained Scheme's upcoming tactical strategy game, The Lamplighter's League and the Tower at the End of the World, and it makes for an intriguing set up for the 1930's themed pulp adventure.
Set in an alternate history 1930s, a cult called the Banished Court aims to take over the world. The best have all been wiped out, so the Lamplighter's League has to turn to what Harebrained Schemes' Game Director Chris Rogers calls the "best of the worst" to save the world.
«There's no time to recruit new ones, so we're going with the best of the worst: scoundrels, thieves, assassins, murderers are gonna have to band together to save the world,» Rogers tells me during a hands-off demo during the Game Developer's Conference last week.
Like BATTLETECH and the Shadowrun trilogy before it, The Lamplighters League is a real-time, turn-based tactical combat game where players will need to think about team composition, positioning, and using the battlefield to their advantage to come out on top. However, Lamplighters adds a new twist to this formula: a real-time infiltration stage that can help set the battle up to your advantage.
First, though, you need a team. In our demo, we have a few of the «best of the worst» to choose from, including a Nun-turned-machine-gun-toting-healer Ana Sofia, as well as an assassin who used what Rogers says was the «dark side of the occult» to do good, though the order would usually end up corrupted. However, the order, along with the Lamplighters, were all killed in the Great War (World War 1).
It's an interesting dynamic
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