In 2023, A Sharp released the second installment of their videogame series Six Ages set in the fantasy world of Glorantha. I played through the first part Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind and had a blast, so I am really looking forward to playing the continuation: Six Ages: Lights Going Out. A Sharp released a free demo you can download from Steam. This demo lets you play the first 3 years of the game, to give you a taste of what the full videogame is like. I played through the demo and I want to share some of the "saga" I generated while playing it, as well as my first impressions of the game. I hope you find it interesting!
As the continuation of Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind, the videogame mechanics look exactly the same. The story, however, has evolved and changed... Your clan is still in the God Time, and in the same river valley, but now you are in the next age, called the Great Darkness. Several generations have passed since the ending of the previous videogame, and all has gone pretty much awry. In the interim, your clan and its heroes managed to forge a kingdom out of many of the clans in the valley, and ruled it, but afterwards it slowly fell into decadence. The kingdom is still standing, but its glory days are long past, and few clans if any respect the king. The main reason for this is the fact the world is being overrun by the forces of Chaos. After a couple of big battles against them, your heroes were lost, and with them the sacred regalia used to rightly appoint new kings and queens. I am not mentioning the names of those heroes, because I don't want to spoil the first game for you if you haven't played it yet! Anyway, this is how the game sets back the clock, so you have to rebuild the temples that were abandoned during the bad times, as well as your general wealth and reputation. But now that your main gods are dead, and the gods of Chaos are destroying what's left of the world, how long will your clan be able to survive?
Well, at least I managed to survive the first three years of the demo, that's something isn't it? :-) The game starts exactly like the previous one, with a questionnaire that defines several aspects of your clan with questions about its past. In the full game you can import the clan you created in the first videogame, but for this demo, I decided to just create a new one. One of the questions sets the level of difficulty, and I chose something like "the challenges ahead of us are going to be worse than we expected" as I figured I could probably handle a higher than average difficulty for just three in-game years...
My three-year-long saga
During the first seasons in the first year, we rebuilt some of the temples to the deities that help our clan gather food, like Inilla the Forager, and Dostal the Hunter, following the advice of my advisors. They later warned me that the ceremonies to our main gods were no longer working, and that probably meant they were dead as the rumors and divinations indicated. However, we decided to keep sacrificing to the Earth Mother in case she could still somehow grant a piece of her blessing upon our crops. But soon afterwards we learned that more of our gods had died, so we decided to stop sacrificing to our main goddess. Yes, the situation is that dismal, and it is not going to improve in the short-medium run! Oh no...
One day our best hunter was poisoned by a centipede spirit and fell seriously ill. Our shamaness informed us that the guy had insulted the spirit and so the centipede had punished him. I therefore decided to leave him be and not to antagonize the spirit, hoping he would eventually recover, although he fell into a slumber and could not be awakened. Many of our people decried my indifference, as that master hunter could have provided us with a lot of game, so the clan's mood worsened!
Then some clan nobles demanded we do something else apart from just trying to survive, so we cleared some fields and held ceremonies in memory of the Barley goddess and the Earth Mother. Without the magic of the goddess, however, many marriages were starting to fail. For example, Ernailiria of a neighboring clan divorced Angvot from our clan, and we decided to pay her dowry back to her. The clan mood was on a free-fall after this, so I decided to start a year-long venture to improve their spirits. Still, it was to no avail.
In Earth Season we finally got some good news: one of our best traders came back having secured an alliance with another clan from beyond the river, the Seven Stars! We are going to need more allies, though. Before the year came to an end, a trader offered us to buy a magic item he claimed could protect us from falling stars, but we declined, as it had to be false. That made me smile, as it reminded me of an event from Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind. And I am pretty sure this scene's goal is precisely that!
My second year started with good omens for trade, so I sent a couple caravans to trade with nearby clans. We also needed to reestablish our lost trade routes, but that would need to wait for later.
Our best shaman suggested performing a rite to increase our connection with the spirits in order to obtain lots of magic, but at the risk of losing our connection to the gods. Luckily, it went well. Perhaps encouraged by this success, another of the members of the inner ring, a priestess of Elmal, god of riders, asked us for permission to go on a quest through a hole in the world (which I think it means she went closer to the gods). She was absent for many seasons, but eventually she came back with Charandal, a legendary horse. In the game, I played through several scenes in which she interacted with characters and scenes out of myths. Of course, after this good news, disaster could not be far away.
A nasty swarm of Chaos moths had eaten through the sacred tapestries that record our clan's history! I asked my council for ideas, and we finally decided to ask our ancestors for help. They listened to our plea, and managed to restore the damage. Soon after, out king Iverlantho managed to solve a legal dispute that two other clans in the kingdom had brought to us.
My third year started with good omens for hunting. Thanks to the magic of the spirits, we had plenty of magic power to spend in the new year ceremonies, so we performed the rites to help us in a variety of areas, including battle! Little did I know that they would help us a lot that fateful year...
Only some weeks later, our patrols spotted a group of trolls, the people of Darkness. They looked like they wanted to parley, so we did not attack them outright. They told us their people needed allies to prevent the forces of Chaos from destroying the world, and asked permission for their queen to visit our king later that year. We agreed.
Then our king Iverlantho demanded to lead the clan and be acclaimed as king. He was tired of being mostly a figurehead. We reluctantly decided we would appoint him chieftain, but only after we had regained the tribal regalia that had been lost generations ago. I hoped that would buy us some time while our lore masters researched where to look for the lost relics.
In Fire Season, we decided to improve our clan morale by going on raids! First we tried to steal some cattle from a neighboring clan, but they saw us coming, so we quickly retreated. Some weeks later, we were ready for battle, so we launched a full raid against the Sun Bow clan who live across the river. We even invited the Seven Stars clan to join us. We eluded their patrols and charged! Our rivals were cautious and decided to maneuver to flank our allies. When we realised their intentions, we cast spells to try to break their charge, but they fell nonetheless upon our allies, killing many brave men. Enraged, we pressed our attack and we were finally able to plunder their lands, taking many cows, some horses, an even a magic item back home!
After the raid, Kerenna, our best warrior, received a vision. In it, she saw the chieftain of the Sun Bows meddling with necromantic magic, so she announced she was going to kill him, as dealing with the dead in that fashion was an affront to her god. She succeeded and came back with a divine blessing as a reward.
Some time later, strange visitors came upon our lands. They claimed to be followers of some weird Chaos god (Pocharngo), and offered us a prayer to their evil god to divert a Chaos horde headed our way. We declined, of course, but immediately started making preparations for the fight. Soon, we saw them coming. It was a big mass of cannibal warriors, with their serrated teeth ready to tear up human flesh, and accompanied by terrible broos, scorpion men and other abominations. Our people were fearful. After much consideration, we decided our best bet would be to trust our champion, Kerenna. She suggested leaving the lead of the army to another one of us, while she stepped out of our fortress to kill as many Chaos troops as possible. It looked rather suicidal, but she looked confident enough, so we agreed. Kerenna called on her god and entered a trance-like state. She rampaged through the Chaos horde and managed to kill so many cannibals that the rest broke and fled! Such a badass! We only had to lament the loss of a few warriors during the fight.
In Dark Season, the trolls came back as promised, escorting their queen. It was a most impressive sight, riding atop a giant beetle. In a God Quest she had attained a powerful magic item against Chaos that a prophecy had told her she had to give to a human king. She wanted to see if our king Iverlantho was the one. However, she was disappointed by our answers and told us we were not the ones she was looking for.
Later on, in Fire Season, we decided to go exploring, and Kerenna came across a strange white broo. The goat-headed Chaos creature pleaded to be killed, as the Weeders, the primitive people who live on the riverbanks, had cursed him with a conscience! Kerenna did not think twice and swiftly beheaded the broo. However, the Weeders cursed us for having given the broo exactly what he wanted.
Then in Storm Season another disaster fell upon us. Many members of our clan were suddenly almost unable to breathe. We discussed what to do, and we sent an emissary to the Sun Bows clan for help. They had many good healers, but we feared they would deny us their help after having attacked them twice that year. However, to our surprise they came anyway and managed to heal half of our afflicted people, may the gods bless them! I think we owe them a favor or two now. Actually, it may be good to try and forge an alliance with them!
And thus the demo ended. Some more events took place along these three in-game years, but I have summarized it a bit.
So, what do I think of the game so far?
Unsurprisingly, I am already hooked. The art is great. I specially like the pieces by Jan Pospisil and Simon Roy. I love that the game is set in the age where Chaos runs amok in Glorantha, and gods are dying. But mostly, I am looking forward to making more difficult decisions, facing challenging odds, seeing epic heroines emerge, and having my clan survive all the madness and the Chaos invasions of the Great Darkness. I am also very intrigued by the emerging narrative. I think in this demo you can start seeing some hints. My guess is that two main axes are going to define the story: first, how the clan has to rely more and more upon the spirits and less and less on the gods and goddesses that are slowly dying. To the point that the clan might ultimately need to get all its magic only from the spirits. Secondly, there is a tension between the need to uphold the value of a kingdom and the need to be practical and get rid of everything that does not directly help your clan survive the challenging times. However, the people of my clan seemed to still hold the king in very good regard, so you can't kick him out straight away... I also wonder if the troll queen would have given us the magic item had I chosen the king as clan chieftain... And what are the powers of that magic item??? On top of that, the quest for the three tribal regalia looks interesting. I wonder if I will be able to retrieve the Horn of Vingkot somewhere in the east, or... will this quest lead only to frustration and a loss of valuable resources and warriors? Oh, I can't wait to know!
If you have also played through the demo and have your own guesses about the full game, please share them in a comment below! I also hope you have enjoyed reading my first foray into the videogame Six Ages: Lights Going Out. Let me know what you think about it! You can also read an interview to the designer: David Dunham and read my first adventures playing Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind. Thanks for reading! ;-)
Que maravilla de ilustraciones!
ResponderEliminarSí, son una auténtica gozada. En este juego sucede una desgracia tras otra, pero te da igual porque disfrutas de las ilustraciones. 😝
EliminarYou can find the horn in the east, or get it from a duck trader, the duck trader might cheat you but such are the risks of dealing with ducks.
ResponderEliminarThanks for telling me, now I can sleep soundly again. 😄
EliminarAs for the duck trader, I wouldn't blame him, it's the Great Darkness and so it's everyone for themselves. Even more so when you are just a small Durulz in a big dark world and the god of fair trade is dead. 🥺