Way back in this column’s infancy, I wrote an enthusiastic review of Cryptic Comet’s PC game ARMAGEDDON EMPIRES. Designed by Vic Davis, I thought the post-apocalyptic game pulled off a pretty neat trick- it was essentially a tabletop game but with all of the fairly complex mechanical and administrative work managed by the program. My first thought playing the game was that it would be probably be terrifyingly long and possibly unplayable as a plastic-and-cardboard production. A few years on, Mr. Davis and Cryptic Comet have returned with SOLIUM INFERNUM, an all-new title that takes players to bowels of Hell for another digital board game experience.
SOLIUM INFERNUM is set in a Hell that is without a ruler, with players representing various demonic Archfiends vying for control of the Infernal Throne. To do so, Archfiends have to impress the Infernal Conclave by accumulating Prestige Points (what you and I might normally call “victory points”) by controlling Places of Power, completing public or secret objectives, squelching the ambitions of rival Archfiends by crushing their legions, and generally exerting evil power across the ashy wastes of Hell.
Diplomacy is critical as the Infernal Conclave has a very strict, formalized system of keeping the Archfiends from simply running amuck and resources such as Hellfire and Darkness must be managed to purchase or create the numerous legions, rituals, artifacts, manuscripts and other items that can swing the tide of battle. The game is also something of a “4x” title, complete with its own version of tech trees so there is an impetus to spend resources on improvement throughout the course of a game.
It’s a great setup, and the Satanic theme is really fun if you’re the kind of person (like me) that gets more giggles out of a Dio album cover than were likely intended. The presentation, despite its simple graphics, is quite outstanding- the evil theme runs through every piece of finely rendered, CCG-quality artwork that portrays the denizens and minions of Hell. Flavor text is present for almost everything in the game, and as such it creates a pretty vivid dark fantasy world that gives the game a unique and very baroque tone. It’s the kind of game you look at and think “hell yeah”. Which is exactly as intended, I suspect.
In play, the game is a tightly structured sequence of 19 phases. Yes, 19 turn phases, and with between two and six actions per player occurring throughout. In other words, if SOLIUM INFERNUM were a board game, it would probably be one of those that would take a full Saturday to play. Or possibly more.
Thankfully, the computer manages all of the most time-consuming bits and the logistical elements, but the fact remains that there’s a lot going on and unfortunately a lot of it isn’t very apparent- but more on that when we get into the sins that this game has committed. Each turn, players pre-select their actions from menus. And there are a lot of them. Demanding tribute, moving legions, conducting diplomacy, bidding on artifacts, creating combat cards, and more give the player a lot to consider each turn, but in practice I felt that the game was almost overwhelming in the number of options that I had- even though through most games I felt that the actual range of possible actions was illusory due to resource shortage, situational consideration, or simply not being able to do a number of them.
