Tim Conkling’s Antihero, a digital board game about building up your own thieves guild through tact, timing, and a little bit of violence, is available now.
After eight months in Itch.io’s First Access -a more developer controlled alternative to Steam Early Access- Antihero has been released into the wild.
Antihero, which joined First Access back in December of last year, has been in development since 2015, during which time it has won a lot of praise including reaching the finals in the Google Play Indie Festival award, and winning the excellence in design at the 2016 Independent Games Festival.
The game, for those unfamiliar, is a strategy, turn-based title which sees you moving units around an isometric, cartoon representation of a Victorian city. Most of the city blocks contain properties of note which can be investigated or taken over by your various units. As the game is inherently competitive, and the games’ various units are quick to recruit, it only takes a few turns for the fog of the city to be pushed back to reveal areas already drawn into the race by your opponents. It’s character system is wonderfully visual and easy to grasp, with rough looking thugs able to break other units on the board, young scamps serving as adept scouts, and hooded, bomb wielding bombardiers deployed for sabotage.
Turns are -as an effect- short and easy to manage, and all bar the longest matches wind up within 40 minutes. This short playtime is also due in part to the fact that victory doesn’t simply come from conflict, but also through acquiring victory points — these are gained through various means, completing missions, taking out specific targets, and more.
Those interested in the game would suffer none at reading our man Matt’s preview, and recent review, of the game.
Antihero is available now on itch.io and Steam. It’s set to release on mobile devices later on this year.
