Thea: The Awakening

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!

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.

Relaxing endless replay ability. This is a game that I go to when everything else just isn't doing it for me.

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.

Thea the awakening is a fun game but quite grindy. You have to be prepared to sink hours into the game.

My first and probably unique review. i like turn base tactic game and this one is a very cozy , refreshing and original experience in this domain. The conflict resolution is a little bit obscur to figure at first but it is has its depht while rewarding different approach.

Like all natural diamond , it has value because it is flawed and unique.


The game is rather challenging for several reason , partly because it is slightly designed as a roguelite in its even broader meaning but also bevause gameplay explanation are sparse or lacking.

Well worth a try if you like the genre but this is one of these game that can be hard to get into at first. There is party personnalisation , survival element , "skill" tree , different starter unlocked after each run and a very interesting story / lore to top it all.

Excellent for the price. Easy to pick the basic gameplay.