Games worth discovering

Indiana Jones meets H.P. Lovecraft in tactics adventure The Lamplighters League

3K View2023-09-29

The Lamplighters League

AdventureRPGStrategy

Get

SHOULD I PLAY THE LAMPLIGHTERS LEAGUE?

Definitely play The Lamplighters League if you’re at all interested in turn-based tactics, or are simply up for an Indiana Jones-inspired adventure full of creepy cultists, ancient artifacts, and sinister schemes. While it looks a bit lighthearted and simple at first, I was impressed by its depth and originality. It’s a worthy successor to developer Harebrained Schemes’ Battletech, while being substantially more fluid and approachable.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played around two hours of The Lamplighters League, which has taken me through the first two beefy missions. So far I haven’t had much choice about what to take on—these first two missions are the same for every playthrough—but it looks like things are about to open up quite a bit. I started assembling my crew of talented special agents, who work out of a secret hideout on a tiny Mediterranean island, and began working on sabotaging the plans of three evil “Scions” who call themselves the Banished Court. My job was to keep them from entering the mythical Tower of Babel while my new employer, Locke, worked out where exactly this tower actually was.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT THE LAMPLIGHTERS LEAGUE?

• The theme is instantly charming. The Lamplighters League is set in the interwar period and reminded me of movies like Indiana Jones and The Mummy. The Lamplighters operate out of a tiny island fortress that could have been plucked out of Porco Rosso, while each mission had me sneaking around evil foot soldiers in gas masks and deranged cultists. There’s a mix of 1930s globe-trotting style with the pulp horror themes of magazines like Weird Tales, which was right in the sweet spot for me in terms of setting.

• There’s room for creative tactics. The Lamplighters League also reminded me of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, another recently released tactics game that I absolutely loved. Like that game, The Lamplighters League gave me unique characters to use however I saw fit. With Lateef, I could sneak up behind enemies out of combat and sucker punch them for an instant takedown, while Ingrid could charge through a row of enemies and knock them to the ground, making them vulnerable. Meanwhile, war vet Eddie had two six-shooters he could use to lay down barrages of fire, and Tesla mines he could toss to attract enemies and shock them.

What’s more, there is a cool card mechanic at the core of the game called the Undrawn Hand that allowed me to change the way characters played in combat. Using cards drawn after each mission, I could give my agents new abilities or characteristics that could make them better at tanking damage or supporting their teammates. On the other hand, when one of my characters took too much damage in a mission, they’d suffer a stress break and take on a card that gave them debuffs—some of these lasted a certain number of campaign turns, but I’ve been promised that some of these stress break cards are more difficult to remove.

Add in a unique skill tree for each character, and I was impressed by how much creativity I could use when thinking about how I wanted to develop each agent, and how I might find new roles for them in future missions.

• Fluid transitions from real-time to turn-based. During missions, The Lamplighters League let me freely explore in real-time, and that included a bunch of skulking around enemy patrols and guard posts. However, I always had the option to “go loud” by flipping to turn-based combat mode. It worked seamlessly, and it set up interesting decisions about when to begin engagements: I might want to split my group up to post Lateef somewhere high where he could take pistol potshots from safety, while putting Ingrid in a good ambush position. In other situations, I wanted to keep my agents close to each other, so they could help each other if one was downed.

• The environments add to the tactical depth. Each map in The Lamplighters League is full of hazards I could use as traps for enemy soldiers: Puddles of water could be electrified with Eddie’s mines, and spilled oil would catch fire and ignite anyone standing in it. Plus characters like Ingrid could charge into enemies and send them flying into their buddies or off a wharf. Each fight offered me lots of opportunities for mayhem and it was a blast trying to take advantage of as many of them as I could.

• It’s easy to slip between keyboard/mouse and controller. I always appreciate it when a game lets me freely swap between control types, and The Lamplighters League is great about that. I wound up preferring the gamepad controls, but it was no problem any time I decided to switch back to keyboard and mouse. The gamepad controls are fairly intuitive and clearly marked, so I haven’t run into any issues with forgetting how to do specific actions so far.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT THE LAMPLIGHTERS LEAGUE?

• It feels a bit restrictive at first. The first couple of missions in The Lamplighters League only feature three agents (or four, if you count the pilot they rescue, who helps them escape and then staunchly refuses to ever get out of his seaplane ever again). By the end of the second mission, I was hungry for some new abilities to try out, because these three agents kept me locked into a pretty specific playstyle. That’s about to change: The next mission involves rescuing a new agent, and I’ll have to pick between a combat medic and an assassin. However, it did take a couple hours for me to get to the point where I felt I could actually start being creative with my team.

💬 Will you be joining the Lamplighters in their race to protect the legendary Tower of Babel, or do you think turn-based tactics belong in a museum? Let me know in the comments!