It was 1997. I had only just discovered that the bizarre slurry of Indiana Jones references, Father Mulcahy quotes, and random Sunday school flannelgraphs that I had assumed had come together into a working understanding of God didn’t really measure up. Hungry to devour anything that might inform my newly discovered faith, a copy of a book called This Present Darkness crossed my path. Pitched to me as an epic story of spiritual warfare as the forces of heaven clashed with the demons and dark spirits — the actual story felt like a slice of life story about a kid trying to do right by his friends and family while demons wringed their hands and angels brooded because not enough people were praying for them to do anything about it. This was the feeling I got when I first heard about the early development of Deliverance, a game currently on Kickstarter from Lowen Games. A game about spiritual warfare as the forces of heaven and hell did battle for the souls of the people sounded amazing, but I’d been down that road before. I didn’t want to get my hopes up for an epic clash of strategy and divine might when all I was going to get was a lesson about prayer while reading Ephesians 6: 12. So I signed up to get on the mailing list and a game development Facebook group and hoped for the best.
It didn’t take long before I felt the excitement growing. Art assets were getting shared for the angelic characters and their dark nemeses. Playtest reports were coming back and the feedback was being listened to by the designer. While everything was underpinned by scripture references and a desire to see people interact with the characters and narratives found there, they weren’t forcing themselves to be bound to characters and design choices ripped directly from the text either — allowing them the ability to explore some unique character designs both in look and in mechanics. By the time we started seeing the product come together and hearing plans for the game’s roll-out I was itching to get my hands on it.
The Light in the Darkness
So lets talk about what this game gets right — because there’s a lot of it.
The challenge with telling a Christian story with the forces of God battling evil is the temptation to make God always win because, well, He does. It’s why I said that book felt so weird and disjointed when I read it. The book of Job shows us that even when it seems like the devil and the forces of hell are holding sway they have to go before God and ask permission first. As someone who has now thrown himself upon the rock that is the solo-mode of this game, I’ll tell you that victory can only come if you are willing to think through your movements and actions carefully. Simply plan on rushing into battle swinging a big, flaming sword around and you’ll lose. You have to be aware of the state of the saints on your board — because ending a round with saints being oppressed means that many more darkness cards begin to be revealed and explode onto board and they can be devastating if the wrong one gets revealed at the right time.
Each angel has their own set of talents and abilities unique to them. It allows the players to synergize their play styles to get the most out of their moves as the game goes on, but I never met one of them that felt useless or relegated to certain situations. It’s incredibly satisfying to see objectives succeed, leading to more experience, which then leads to getting new abilities or new gear from the heavenly treasures deck to help take down the rest until the selected fallen prince for the game is revealed and – hopefully – dealt with. When I’ve played there have been several exciting moments where I needed a roll to go my way in order to cascade through a series of results and actions and I found myself standing up alone at my table just because the moment filled with so much delicious tension and pay-off on my turn.
The interactions with scripture and faith are all through the game’s pieces without clanging like a loud, intrusive gong over the moment by moment action of the game. Players can use an action on their turn to get prayer cards that can empower them or hurt their enemies – and each of those cards contains an actual prayer from the Bible. Likewise the heavenly treasures also either make reference to a specific item from the biblical narrative or something derived from the words of a passage – such as the Strong Tower, a shield that helps the player’s survivability.
While not every character can be tied to a specific scripture reference, the lore on the back of each character board contains story that informs their style and effects. It’s impressive when I’m playing a game and I find myself digging into my Bible because I got blindsided by something I couldn’t remember seeing before, and yet there I was flipping over the card for the Euphrates Frogs because I wanted to know more about where they came from. And yet, none of that muddies the waters when it comes to the gameplay itself. It is all there to be explored when the player wants to see it and explore it — most likely after a moment of tension leading to glorious victory because of it.
The Hard Truth
You might read everything else in this review and think that I’d have nothing bad to say about the game. It’s true that I’m a big fan of what the team at Lowen Games has put together here, but I don’t want to leave without pointing out a few things that may have you reconsidering getting the game yourself.
This is definitely on the bigger end of the spectrum of Christian-based games we’ve looked at before. It’s got lots of bits, boards, and bookkeeping that isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time. This is especially felt with the minions – the minor spirits that start the game off on the board – as you may have multiple units of each type of spirit and you have to track damage to each individual unit on the same board by stacking damage and status tokens up on the appropriate numbered position on the card. While the rules are fairly streamlined, the iconography is readable, and each player has a reference card that can give them what they need at a glance – this kind of skirmish style game isn’t something that just anyone can jump into.
If you aren’t somebody that gets excited about rolling dice for combat or go along for the ride of a swingy board state, there isn’t much here that will change your mind. A lot of player abilities require a dice roll test to pull off or gain an extra benefit, which means that if you aren’t ok with occasionally having turns that are lackluster or pretty much break down to “I roll my dice and do nothing” – you might not be excited for the way this game runs. Likewise, when darkness cards get revealed it can be either inconsequential or devastating depending on the card and when it’s revealed. While the characters do have actions that allow them to remove darkness cards before they can be revealed, not everyone is excited about playing clean up while Michael is across the board smacking an imp for four damage worth of flaming sword bursts.
Lastly I’ll say one issue that may or may not come up at your table, but one that needs to be considered as I’ve had a handful of people voice concerns to me. These minions are fallen angels and unclean spirits. The princes are taken from demonic forces. Some of the players at your table – especially those who are people of faith – might be uncomfortable with having that depicted on their table, doubly so if they end up winning. While it’s perfectly possible to play this game without too much concern for that issue in your group and among your players, it’s worth taking a moment to consdier.
The Final Battle
It took a while for us to get our hands on a copy of the prototype for the game and get it to table enough times to give this review the fullest picture of what the game is like on the whole. That means that if you are reading this when it is posted, you only have six more days to decide whether this is something you would want to back or how deeply you’d want to do so. Like many other games on Kickstarter, there is a deluxe option where the angel standees are replaced by sculpted miniatures and more. There is still time, though, so if you were on the fence about backing it I’m here to tell you that you will not be disappointed with the experience of this game if you like a skirmish style board game.
I’ll also say that after playing it repeatedly and putting it before the board, we are happy to give Deliverance the InnRoads seal of approval. While there are things that might dissuade a person from picking the game up, anybody who enjoys the overlap on the Venn diagram where strategic planning and tactics meets stand-up dice rolling excitement and the need to evolve strategies based on changes to the board state will find a lot to enjoy with Deliverance.