Despot’s Game: Dystopian Army Builder
About This Game
Prepare to die, humans!A group of people wake up in a strange post-apocalyptic labyrinth — naked, with no memories and with a bunch of weapons. Is this a joke, a crazy experiment, or… a game? You’ll find out soon enough, just try not to die first!
Get your pretzels readyYour puny squad is capable of much more. Choose your loot and transform the squishy humans into wizards, cultists, ninjas and dozens of other heroes, including the mythical stale pretzel throwers. With perks and class combos, there are thousands of ways to build your army. The man-eating cabbage will appreciate the variety in its diet!
Crush your rivalsIf you can survive the labyrinth, you’ll meet THE UNSTOPPABLE END-GAME BUILDS OF OTHER PLAYERS! You’ll beat each other to death and only one will be spared by d’Spot. No offense, but in his own game he writes the rules!
Indirect combatPrepare your warriors and let them fight it out on their own! Indirect combat allows you to focus heavily on tactical considerations rather than reflexes. Strengthen your front line with fridge-movers, aim your food-throwers and look after your Forbidden Summoners!
Endless exploration The dungeons are generated from scratch every time, and there is no chance puny humans will ever find the way out! And even if they strike lucky — don’t worry, there are endless ways to die in Despot’s Game!
Game Discussion
Chief 0
Enjoyed this indie title a lot.
Its pretty much completed for early access already and has lots of features.
Steam User 14
I lost a lot in Despot's Game. A lot.
Entire teams wiped out because I trusted one unit too much. Perfect-looking builds collapsing because I stood one tile too far to the left. The game never yelled at me for it. It just let me watch the consequences.
And somehow, that was fun.
I ended up finishing everything, not out of stubborn completionism, but because every run felt like a puzzle that refused to stay solved. You learn something, feel smart for five minutes, then the game politely reminds you that other players had clever ideas too.
The autobattler PvP is the best part.
You are not fighting people in real time. You are fighting ghosts of other builds. Weird comps, clever synergies, and the occasional monster that exists solely to humble you. Losing usually makes sense. Winning feels earned, but never safe.
Progress never breaks the game. Unlocks do not hand you free wins, they give you new ways to mess up. Most failures can be traced back to a decision you were very confident about ten minutes ago.
There is also a strange humor to all of it. The dystopian setting, the cheerful cruelty, the tiny units bravely walking into terrible odds. You send them off, adjust the numbers, and pretend you had nothing to do with it.
This game also gave me more SteamHunters points than anything else in my library, which feels fitting. Despot's Game rewards patience, repetition, and being willing to laugh at your own bad ideas.
I finished it.
I lost far more than I won.
And I enjoyed every recalculation along the way.
Steam User 9
If Steam had a sideways thumb button I'd choose that. This game is a 6/10 realistically.
Gameplay: gets stale fast, most of my hours are from achievement hunting which is becoming exhausting, especially the 100 pvp wins because you have to get an hour and a half of pve per 4 pvp rounds half of which you wont win because of bad rng or just having a non meta comp.
Vibes: the games cringe in a good way, I enjoyed the humor and the easter eggs for my first couple play throughs, the music is alright, it doesn't get annoying to listen to like many other synth soundtracks. The art style is consistent, albeit nothing to put on the fridge.
Overall get the game if its on sale for like $5, its worth doing a few runs so you can do all the quirky lil quests and have a few chuckles.
Steam User 4
a dopamine machine along the lines of Vampire Survivors -- and your reward at the end is seeing just how good your army stacks up against other players. this is a blast to play through, a uniquely rewarding experience that just feels better than other autobattlers on the market. great soundtrack too!
Steam User 3
It's fun when you get the flow of the game. But I'm not seeing myself doing more than 30 runs overall. I am interested enough to see more combos between teams though.
Steam User 3
Not gonna lie, I DID expect a bit more, but at the end of the day it's an auto battler with some replayability, some different modifiers/modes, and an asynchronous multiplayer, where you fight other players' teams after you win the game (or in between in 1 mode) for ... nothing, really, bragging rights. There's a leaderboard. It's an interesting idea, and you can't fault Konfa Games for rehashing their one and only idea over and over again. They have built this "Despot" universe, but each game in it is vastly different, only keeping the pixel art, the puny humans, Spot and some of the unit designs you see in later games.
In this game you will build teams based on your preferences and RNG. Each puny human can be outfitted with different weapons or gadgets, a certain amount of unique ones in each class increase the class synergy, unlocking powerful abilities. You have tanks, healers, fighters, ranged damage dealers, mages, and so on. Unfortunately, there is not a lot more to see, once you've actually won once. You can experiment with some different team comps, but at the end of the day you either focus on building a massive team and inevitably losing high XP humans to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ buggy (?) Mantraps (I swear, they have like double the HP of any other enemy on this floor, have no armor, but still take NO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ damage. And there's 3 (!) of them in Sprint Mode. Twice per run! I hate them.
The real differences don't come from the shop, because eventually you can pretty much build whatever team you prefer, but from the mutators you pick up along the way, which can steer your run into a very distinct direction and cause you to pivot your current strategy if you find a good one. Or not. Up to you.
Winning so far has unlocked new mutators and stuff for you to find, but unfortunately no new classes or even inter-class synergy effects. Your tanks will be your tanks, your fencers your fencers, you can't multi-class them or gain synergy effects by having x of one and y of another, so there are no unique interactions, which could have really helped the longevity and replayability here.
As with their last game I see the appeal, and I think 20 bucks is justified, but it's really more of a pretty solid foundation. For example, every run has the same bosses and enemies, the same classes, the same upgrades you can do in between (more health, more damage, etc.), only the mutators vary, really. Even the events are very limited. There's like 2 event rooms in each biome, and only 1 of them appears, but that means that you will encounter the same room in every other run, same with the events after clearing a floor. I've already seen many events like 3 or 4 times now.
Like I said, I wish they would have actually ... stuck with it? Expanded upon it. Focus on fewer puny humans, but more impactful strategies and synergies ... or build a low health, low damage swarm team, or a team entirely focused around summoning things without an actual tanky frontline, because so far I don't see a way of actually getting very far without tanks and healers, which takes away some of the supposed choice.
Still, it's enjoyable, the pixel art is gorgeous, the humor is good, and the music is a banger, so I'd definitely give it a whirl. You CAN get a lot more out of it than like 5 hours as I did, but for me ... I know what it is now. I'm good.
Steam User 3
Once you understand this game flow, its like drugs.
Like really good drugs...
Like drugs you can't stop doing when you start.
Steam User 2
Its a great game for the price, you can get a few hours of fun out of it. i like all the animations for the weapons because they make me excited.
but the game is sadly short and the dev puts weird emphasis on multiplayer. game feels a finished empty after 1 victory screen which isnt good for a roguelike