Thea: The Awakening

A potent mix of slavic mythology, a weird card game and “we have civilization at home..” makes for a highly addictive brew!
First of all, just to make it abundantly clear. I love Thea! This game is a great example of a project that really shows how much care and love the developers poured into it and even though it stumbles on a few aspects. Personally I really enjoyed my travels in the weird otherworldly lands of Thea where you encounter orcs, goblins and rusalkas while trying to survive in the strange world of Thea after a cataclysmic event seeped darkness into the fabric of reality. You are a small gathering of people following one of the gods of the Slavic pantheon trying to eke out a meager existence in a world filled with strife while simultaneously figuring out what is happening in the world..
The slowly emerging storyline in Thea combined with the rich slavic folklore is what hooked me to the game in the first play and even if I found the rather weird card driven gameplay surrounding “challenges”, as in everything from diplomacy to combat, unintuitive at first I quickly warmed to it. The larger gameplay is a weird 4x style of game where you have one settlement that you leave to go on expeditions with your best and brightest. There are tons of different classes to discover and as your village grows you will strengthen it with lone stragglers seeking refuge, weird monsters moving into your granary as well as babies found in the cabbage field.
The exploration and discovery of the world of Thea is what makes this world pop to life. On your travels gathering raw material and food to keep your village alive you encounter beasts, monsters and wanderers as well as landmarks and other points of interest that further the story bit by bit. This combination of resource management, exploration and quasi-roleplaying breathes life into the characters and makes you care about their trials and tribulations.
In the end this is a hearty recommendation to anyone vaguely interested in the slavic civilization premise. Thea: The Awakening is a great game for players looking for a great yet different 4X game that really wants to tell you a story with an excellent mystical atmosphere! If you are into mythology and folklore, this gets even more mileage since the slavic mythology is one that could really need more love, and this game really makes you appreciate the depth and richness that it holds.

How have I just got around to playing this?
They've taken elements of city builders and card games then mixed in a bit of strategy with just a dash of exploration and rolled it all into a rogue-lite that not only works, but all the parts come together to make one really addictive whole!
If your into any of the genres mentioned, I'd strongly suggest you give this one a shot!

This is a hidden gem. The individual components of the gameplay are well-crafted, and feature inventive twists on what is usually seen in these sort of games. They function smoothly together and make for an original experience.
I'm not normally one to get into crafting, but the variety of recipes and the tangible effect of the multitude of variations kept even me engrossed. Add in enjoyable party management, solid (often amusing) writing and a granular difficulty system, and it was enough to bring me back for multiple playthroughs - something I rarely do these days.

Maybe it's the blend of Slavic folklore with the gritty dark fantasy art or the choose-your-own-adventure style encounter format, but something about Thea keeps me coming back to play all these years later. Here's the best parts of what this game has to offer:

1. Gritty, dark fantasy-style artwork drawing from Slavic folklore
2. Narrated gameplay similar to having a game master or DM narrate your ttrpg choices
3. Replayability using different strategies, tech-tree choices, resources & deity perks
4. Unique dialogue / encounter options depending on group composition, deity choice, previous encounters
5. Interesting combat / conflict resolution via card game where the cards represent your characters

The downsides of this game:
1. Fairly limited for village simulation / management options, limited to one village
2. Combat / conflict encounters can be difficult at first, but can become trivial when using certain strategies
3. The music is fantastic, but limited tracks so the music repeats a lot
4. There are some encounters where the text is not narrated (or the game fails to play the narrators lines)

All in all, Thea: The Awakening is a reasonably solid game considering its age. Worth giving a try if you enjoy hybrid strategy / simulation games with a dash of rpg-style mechanics and dark fantasy overtones.

This is interesting game and definitely feels "on its own".
It's a card game in the end. All battles, social interactions, sneaking, etc. are based on card battles.
You send an expedition to find some precious loot. You find some and may think, is this a good item? Or should I dismantle it in the town? Yes, in the town you construct simple buildings that gather resources automatically for you.
How else you gather resources? Well you have gatherers of course! The map is full of resources and your expeditions and town can gather resources that are no more than one tile away from you.
You have three main character roles (and more): gatherer, warrior, medic. They do well on their specific tasks.
Sometimes I am thinking what I am doing in this world? Just to gather resources and loot - for what? Usually my next goal is just to explore, and long-term goal might be gather resources my next building requires. At this point it feels a bit "gamey": To get "X", you need "Y, Z and K". And sometimes there is a resource "Ö" which is better than "K" - and you want to use it instead.
It's fun to do tasks but somehow it feels repetitive. I like what I am doing but I am not - at least yet - immersed with the world. I don't know if I have urge to launch Thea today. Or tomorrow.
I would rate this 8/10. Good game where you get your money paid off if you buy it on sale. I tried it first time 4 years ago, it didn't really hit me but now when I played it for 5 hours more, I started to understand its appeal. At the moment I feel it's "just" 8/10 because the immersive feeling is missing for me and Thea feels a bit "gamey". Maybe if I gave more time for Thea: The Awakening, I could rate it higher - it's a good game, with Slavic twist.

Thea: The Awakening is a fun and interesting hybrid between a roguelike RPG and turn-based 4x game, including research and a highly customizable crafting mechanic (you gain research points by crafting items and experiencing events) as well as adjustable difficulty levels. A cooperative multiplayer mode is available, as are a couple of free DLCS.

You're playing a small village in a postapocalyptic fantasy world, at first simply trying to survive, and the victory conditions only get revealed to you over time. With it's storytelling (masterfully voiced by a narrator - who does all the voice acting in the game), as well as gorgeous art and music, the game masterfully evokes a dark and melancholy fantasy atmosphere - there are many events to explore - while there were many repeats, I found something new in every one of my playthroughs. While you'll get more powerful with time, you'll remain limited to the one village plus temporary camps, and nighttime always feels dangerous, as it limits your vision and makes wandering monsters much more aggressive. The game also gets points for offering several ways to resolve practically all quests and events, including many non-violent ones (though if you get attacked by wandering monsters, you'll have to fight to defend yourself). None of the races/species inhabiting the world of Thea are simple "monsters" - with the right choices, you can befriend Orcs, Goblins, and even some animals and mythical creatures. Another cool feature is that your experience points are applied collectively to all your villagers, so no worrying about someone lagging behind and becoming useless.

Luck plays a fairly important role and there is some jankiness - for example, in my first game the Herbalist's Hut appeared all the way across a lake (there is no way to move across water), meaning that half of my village just died when my well got poisoned in a random event, as they couldn't make it to the Herbalist on time. In another game I got a very powerful villager with amazing equipment early in the game, making most encounters a cakewalk. There are also some balance issues regarding the crafting mechanic. In other words, it's obvious that Thea was the dev team's first major project.

Overall, however, it was a highly enjoyable experience, and kept me playing it almost as long as I did the old strategy classics such as Civilization.

Absolutely wonderful. I still come back to this game all these years later for the addictive storytelling, voice acting, 4X, choose-your-own-adventure roguelike RPG set in Slavic mythology. Highly recommend.