Shadows of Forbidden Gods turns the usual fantasy strategy conflict inside out: you work to bring about the apocalypse, directing covert agents and corrupted heroes against humanity’s rulers and champions. Rather than lead a conventional invasion, you exploit secrecy and human rivalries, starting with small-scale subterfuge and building toward catastrophic supernatural threats.
Its schemes range from bribing guards and infiltrating farming communities to destabilizing kingdoms. The game lets you manipulate rulers, set dukes against kings, and influence heroes through maddening tales; meanwhile, the forces of good are driven by complex AI and can develop their heroes in response to perceived dangers. That push and pull makes political disruption as central to the design as the eventual disasters, with flexible combinations of agents and effects supporting different approaches to the apocalypse.
Its defining appeal is the scale of escalation: covert plots can grow into plagues, ice ages, volcanic destruction, and the arrival of city-devouring snake-gods.
