The Autochess/Autobattler genre is kind of weird. It just showed up one day as a Dota 2 mod, got immediately yoinked by Riot for Team Fight Tactics, and then… well, then we didn’t get any more huge swings at the genre, at least on PC.
And no, I don’t count Underlords.
That’s not to say there aren’t any. Super Auto Pets, Storybook Brawl, Once Upon a Galaxy, parts of games like Vivid Knight all cribbed elements of the OG autochess games, but like MOBA’s before it, there are a fair number of game design choices that are less “intentional” and more “the engine already does that”. The end result? When bigger companies ripped off developed games in the genre, they lost a lot of things that gave those original games their character, and polished them out.
To me, the biggest one of those changes is the focus on abstract positioning. (Okay, Nexus Amina did this, but it isn’t even out yet.)
Enter Relic Arena.
Most Autobattlers focus on upgrading characters, choosing to drop the entire concept of items that was present in the earlier games. Relic Arena goes the opposite direction. Instead of upgrading characters with abilities, the “characters” are a set of bodies, blank archetypes that can be swapped between rounds if needed.
Here, it’s all about the items. Items taken from real history, like the Aztec Sun Stone, the Mask of Agamemnon, the Titanic… and the Porcelain Throne.
It is a toilet. It turns into a toilet monster.
Relic Arena is on the grump week list not because I think the game itself is particularly bad, but because… well, because I find the theme off-putting. It’s doing that “educational blurbs next to a statblock” thing I’m mostly familiar with from “Age of Empires”.
The thing is, if it was just the items, I think I could handle it. I wouldn’t like, but I’d be quietly amused.
Except… it’s not just the items. In addition to items, at the start of each match, you pick a leader. Leaders give passive build around benefits of some sort. And the leader selection is full of famous historical people like Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, Alan Turing, and Harambe, the dead gorilla from 2016.
I dunno. It feels like the character select screen of a RTS from 2532, once these people are so long they’ve just become famous, and not like… people whose visions of the future are actually still kinda being fought over, and debated?
I think I knew I was out when I unlocked the Native American skin for the Witch class of character. An internal monlogue that just went “Nah man. I’m out.”
I’m good. I don’t want no part of this, no matter how clever your system of ordered item execution is. I don’t want to here VTuber Abraham Lincoln in the corner of my screen talking shit when I get a killing spree.
I. Am. Good.
Okay, actually, while we’re talking about Harambe
Look. Gorillas in zoos is just weird. There are a lot of animals where it’s just like, sure, whatever. Put it in an aquarium, put it in a cage, it’s not great for it, but it’s also not like the worst thing.
I remember seeing a gorilla in a zoo an incredibly long time ago, and it’s stuck with me. Not because of any particular outrage or anger or anything, but just the sense of looking at it on the other side of the glass, looking at the eyes, looking at how they move, and feeling this weird sickness in my stomach. A little part of me telling me “Yeah, no. No, this wrong. This is weird.”
We shouldn’t keep Gorillas in zoos.