It had been a tough couple of rounds for my clan of doomed horse Vikings. The world-shattering war between the gods and chaos now blotted out the sun. The heroes questing for the royal regalia were missing, presumed eaten by druids. All of our goats had gone insane. At least I had sacrificed enough to send my God Talkers on a divine petition to maybe, just maybe, persuade them to prevent another famine. Then a random event informed me that the devil Wakboth World Ruin had just sucker punched our elder god of language out of the sky — wiping out them along with my biggest ally (whom they landed on) and the literal concept of words.
Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out.Publisher: Kitfox GamesDeveloper: A SharpPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on PC.
I was, to quote my senior priest, “ivivm frrrrrl screwed.” But something hit me even harder than Wakboth’s gross serpent fist: at no point during this cursed streak of bad luck had I felt that familiar compulsion to start over.
Do you, like me, suffer from save scum-itis? Is your finger worn to a stump from smashing the F9 key every time you miss a 95 percent chance shot? Do you Groundhog Day your way through every dialog tree outcome until the loading screen tooltips are burned onto your retinas? Then Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out might be the cure. In this choose-your-own-Ragnarok strategy RPG, you lead a tribe of Bronze Age barbarians through an ancient world of myth, magic, and making sure you have more cattle than your neighbours. But unlike its predecessor, Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind, or its ancient ancestor, 1999’s King of Dragon Pass, you won’t be spending your time in Glorantha honour raiding the chariot-people or seducing river dragons. Instead, you’re in a desperate struggle for survival, as the world is dying and your gods have abandoned you.
And that includes the god of RNG. While most of what happens in Lights Going Out is determined by a roll of the die, fortune favours you as often as you’d expect for someone whose doom has been prophesied on ancient stone tablets. Before long, your clan management screen will be flashing more emergency icons than the dashboard of a second-hand Fiat Punto. Meanwhile, you’ll grow to fear the series’ iconic random events, whose once enchanting storybook pages now continuously plunge you into Boschian hellscapes.
For a degenerate save scummer like myself, brute forcing the odds on my side tends to be simply a test of endurance. But here it’s that test you have in a nightmare where you didn’t study, someone stole your pants and then a devil eats your soul. This is the type of lore-first game that hides away your stats, modifiers or even success chances, making trial-and-error runs almost pointless. The closest thing you get is the advice from your tribal council of advisors. But to make matters yet more chaotic, even your sage HUD wasn’t clued in on how to deal with a lot of random calamities either, and often have nothing to add except mutter how the old scrolls didn’t mention anything about octopus vampires stealing your children.