Video Game / Shadows of Forbidden Gods

Shadows of Forbidden Gods is a Dark Fantasy Cosmic Horror Turn-Based Strategy game by Bobby Two Hands first released on itch.io as a demo in July 2021 and then in November 2021 through Steam Early Access. Playing as a Dark Elder God about to awaken from its ancient prison, the player must use their unique abilities and a wide variety of recruitable agents to engineer the downfall of a randomly-generated fantasy world.

The player has many different ways of achieving this goal, including swarming across enemy kingdoms with hordes of orcs, infiltrating their cities and corrupting them from within, wiping out settlements with blizzards or volcanic eruptions, starting your own Dark Empire to subjugate the world, and many more.

The game takes place on a hex-based map dotted with location nodes, most of which are inhabited by humans, monsters, or explorable ruins. AI-controlled heroes and player-controlled agents travel between these locations and complete various tasks, such as fighting bandits or treating plagues (for heroes) or recruiting bands of orcs or causing plagues (for agents). As turns pass, the seals keeping you imprisoned will break, granting you more of your god's unique abilities and a larger pool of power points with which to cast these abilities.

Unfortunately for you, you are not the only power in the world. Set against you from the beginning is a Chosen One (a unique, incorruptible hero with significantly higher stats), the subject of an ancient prophecy that foretells your banishment at their hand. As the human cities fall and awareness of your existence spreads, the people of the world will begin to panic and become more willing to do whatever it takes to stop you, including overtly supporting the Chosen One.

Can you destroy the world before it's too late?

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This work contains examples of:

• The Alliance: If the world gets panicked enough, the nations of humanity will band together into this: effectively a single kingdom, it mercilessly roots out infiltration within its lands and makes war against enshadowed rulers and (if present) the Dark Empire. However, it is not necessarily immune to said infiltration (depending on the starting settings) and can be tricked into tearing itself apart if you instigate the right conflicts.
• Being Evil Sucks: Gaining Profile and Menace points also irreversibly raises their minimums, which in turn makes heroes more motivated to hunt them down. This produces a nicely thematic game mechanic where the darkness ruins and destroys even its own champions.
• Beneath the Earth: The Horrors Beneath DLC introduced Dwarves and an underground region for the world map.
• Boring, but Practical: High-end agent abilties can coax volcanoes to explode, summon an entity that turns fertile land into desert by its very presence... and start a bureaucratic logjam. It's a very useful panic button if e.g. you need to keep a nation from joining the Alliance for long enough to assassinate the Queen.
• Bug War: Starting one is the goal of the Cordyceps Hive Mind.
• The Chosen One: There is always a hero character who is prophesized to defeat you, and even if you manage to kill them, another will pop up to replace them. The Chosen One has significantly boosted stats, is immune to shadow, and will likely be the greatest obstacle to your success. They can be driven insane, but even then they can't be recruited and will continue to oppose you until slain or until you win. They will also be the first to warn the world about your existence, and if left alone they will organize The Alliance to stop you.
• Complete Immortality: Mod god Ixthus's deal. Drink from his waters and you'll come back, no matter what. It takes some time, though, and you'll be awake in your flesh-prison for every moment of it. If an immortal ruler is assassinated by your agents they get back up, a little twitchier, but if they're overthrown by their subjects, several entirely horrible days follow as the mob keeps failing to kill them for good, until the military gains control and reinstates them, mentally rather the worse for wear. A few deaths or enough time (since even sleeping does the flesh-prison thing now) messes immortals up so bad they lose all reference of what mortality is, and heroes turn into Obliviously Evil dread knights, while rulers tidy up their cities for eternity by getting rid of all the noisy moving things. Even as abominations, they remain immortal: the good guys can kill dread knights, bind them to keep them from getting up again, and raze eternal cities, but your agents can unbind dread knights and prop up the rulers from the cellars into restoring their cities.
• The Corrupter: As a malevolent Elder God, you are somewhere between both this trope and The Corruption. Your mere existence spreads Shadow into the world, and your agents (who were mostly ordinary mortals before you turned them into villains) can generate Wells of Shadow to spread it more quickly. Shadow can infect both locations/populations (contributing directly to your victory points) and heroes (causing them to lose their will to oppose you).
• Deal with the Devil: This is Vinerva's schtick, along with Nature Is Not Nice. She offers her gifts to human rulers, and those who accept give her power over their settlement, allowing her to enshadow them, drive them to madness and even destroy their cities with her manifestations.
• Demiurge Archetype:
  • Ophanim. He's the source of Light, calling on humans to worship him and offering protection from the Shadow. He also spreads the Shadow himself to encourage humanity's worship, and his "perfection" of humans turns human kingdoms into fanatical theocracies.
  • Iastur is the maddened creator deity of the world, who wants to destroy it in order to correct the flaws he found. He is a Manipulative Bastard who plays on the minds of heroes and twists their perceptions to his benefit.
  • The Broken Maker is much like Iastur, albeit focused on long-term cycles of creation and destruction focusing on cursing bloodlines to prepare them as agents in a future awakening while humanity adapts to your strategies each time you win against them.
• Difficult, but Awesome: If the player wants to, say, reenact Lord Sauron from Lord of the Rings with vast armies of orcs tramping across the world, they can do that. However, actually pulling it off is insanely hard. Orc Warlord agents gain menace faster than pretty much any other agent in the game, and given most heroes and rulers are predisposed to dislike orcs, your warlord will likely die long before he can gain any steam. But if you do everything right, time your Lay Low actions and distractions perfectly, then you'll have multiple vast armies of orcs sacking cities and raising further fortresses to add even more orcs to their numbers.
• Driven to Madness: Another of your potential weapons, as heroes have Sanity Points as well as Hit Points, and driving them insane (if you can pull it off) is often more effective than just killing them outright.
• Dying Curse: Killing the Harvester removes him from your agent pool, but his spirit will haunt his killer's entire bloodline. In game terms, this tanks their max sanity.
• Fainting Seer: One of the flavor texts for the "pleasant surprise" mid-challenge event is that an augur has been committed after trying to investigate your cult and seeing you. The Daughters of the Creator are an entire sect that peered beyond what man was meant to know; whatever went wrong with them, they're now forced to serve Iastur while at the same knowing he hates them and their existence is a sin. Daughters who flip out about you bringing the end can be recruited as minions and give you the ability to summon the First Daughter.
• The Empire:
  • The Dark Empire; not a lot of subtlety in that name. Created by the Monarch when the king of a realm is enshadowed, though the Monarch is the true leader. Its rulers are quickly enshadowed, and the Monarch can call its armies to crusade and conquer other kingdoms on your behalf.
  • Theocracies are nations controlled by the clergy of Ophanim. They hate shadow, grow quickly in faith, and can be called to crusade against other kingdoms that fail to bend the knee. And since Ophanim controls BOTH the Dark Empire and its theocracies, they can be used to double-team the free humans of the world.
• The End of the World as We Know It: This is your goal, at least from the point of view of the mortal nations.
• Expy: She Who Will Feast is described as a horror who came from the void between the stars, has laid dormant for millions of years, and is now emerging to devour the world and lay her brood, who in turn will go on to doom other worlds. In other words, she's a Dark Fantasy expy of Lavos.
• Fallen Hero: Another game mechanic. Heroes who become sufficiently enshadowed will not only stop opposing you, but can be recruited if you have an opening, converting them into another of your agents! Insane heroes can also be recruited in this manner, though they will usually try to keep opposing you if they aren't also enshadowed. Tragically, The Chosen One is immune to such corruption, so The Paragon Always Rebels isn't on the table. They are, however, vulnerable to insanity, which can hinder their effectiveness against you even if you still cannot make them into agents.
• Festering Fungus: The Cordyceps Hive Mind is a fungus symbiotic with a bunch of Big Creepy-Crawlies that grows hives for them to spread it.
• Gaia's Vengeance: Vinerva is a curious aversion. She plays the trappings of this trope to the hilt, but the one thing she seems to be missing is environmental wrongs humanity's committed - aka the entire point. She has the skillset to be a vast and terrible avenger, but instead is a tree who gives people what they want and lets them destroy themselves with it. It's pretty neat, vast avengers get rote.
• The Great Serpent: Once she awakens, She Who Will Feast starts out large enough to count as an army on the map, and in the event of her victory will eventually grow large enough to devour the world.
• The Heartless: Mammon is an embodiment of a dead civilization's greed, who gains power by devouring the sins of people who start wars for the sake of greed.
• Hereditary Curse: If a ruler of a city lets Shadow and Deep Ones get out of control, you can make their entire bloodline get green around the gills unless they periodically spend time beating back the taint. The Harvester's Dying Curse hits the max sanity of the whole bloodline. Blood magic has a couple of less flashy ones. Mod god Chandalor specializes in love, matchmaking and bringing dynasties together in order to catch the bunch of them with its curses.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: With The Courtier's ability to manufacture scandals with stolen personal items, the player can run a smear campaign against The Chosen One or other heroes to make rulers less likely to help them. If they're pissed off enough, they can even drain their gold reserves or disrupt their actions. Similarly, the Trickster can use said personal items to force a non-Chosen One hero to take the profile and menace increases that would normally be given to your agents, potentially getting heroes to fight each other instead of you.
• The Horde: Orcs in this game don't have a civilization so much as just mustering posts to breed armies, which they then use to assault other civilizations. (And you can help them.)
• Knight Templar: Ophanim is an embodiment of Light who dislikes The Evils of Free Will. His Awakening involves him screaming in frustration at the humans who refuse to accept his perfection.
• Last of His Kind: The Survivor is the last of the frost giants and wishes to exact icy vengeance on the humans who slaughtered his people.
• Lensman Arms Race: This is present in the realm of magic. In the beginning, the human nations have some magic, but not much, and it will stay that way... unless you upset the balance. Once your agents start digging up mystical secrets and improving their own magic powers, the human mages will feel threatened by this, and a magical arms race will result.
• Light Is Not Good: Ophanim spreads Light to defend people from Shadow... right? No. His church is relentlessly fundamentalist, rooting out any traces of doubt or apostasy with bloody-handed violence, and it's actually a tool for the Shadow to dominate the world.
• Lovecraft Lite: Each Elder God, while fully capable of bringing about The End of the World as We Know It, starts as the underdog. If they directly fight against the human heroes, their agents will quickly be crushed, and the Elder God itself begins sealed and consequently does not have access to most of its abilities. To succeed, the Elder God's agents must move in the shadows to weaken the human world before going to open war against it, buying the Elder God the time it needs to fully awaken.
• Mammon: Mammon, Wealth of Mankind and Spirit of the Mountain is one of the playable dark gods. His playstyle is based around spreading his dark influence through trade routes and causing greed and envy in those affected, and devouring crowds of his followers to increase his power. Should enough of his followers throw themselves into his mountain to be consumed, he will win as his greed is satisfied for the time.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: The Chosen One can have a mentor who brings them comfort, and killing this mentor is one way of striking at the Chosen One. The flavor text for killing the mentor even lampshades that this was bound to happen.
• Meta Guy: Iastur's playstyle involves driving people mad by planting a tome on a hero or ruler that reveals that they are pawns in a simulation he created to amuse jaded higher beings than him (the player), so why not aid in its destruction if nothing matters?
• Monster Protection Racket: Ophanim spreads light and protection from the Shadow, and encourages mortals to embrace his religion. Ophanim is also the source of the Shadow, and his playstyle involves bringing Shadow to the world before saving the people with her faith (which grows faster when there's Shadow to fear).
• Nature Is Not Nice: Vinerva is a primordial nature deity who, once it's time to stop playing nice, rallies the spirits of the Wilderness to return the world to its unpolluted state.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Dwarves live in the underground layer of the map, and are able to reverse the devastation caused by wars or the disasters you inflict on the world. While easily affected by Shadow, they can reverse it on themselves by sacrificing gold- but of course, this means they can be easily be undone by making them unable or unwilling to give up their gold. Furthermore, dwarves are prone to grudges and if their crown jewels are stolen they will readily go to war to take them back- something your agents can readily exploit by framing another nation for your theft.
• Our Elves Are Different: Compared to humans, elves have rulers who do not die of old age, cannot be affected by plagues, and their Crystalsmith heroes can construct Elfstones that absorb Shadow. However, their nations are easily destabilized by assassination due to not designating heirs in advance, and if the Wayfinder heroes who select new rulers (and must themselves be appointed by a ruler if they are killed or corrupted) are out of the picture as well they will be crippled by political deadlock. The Elfstones can be a point of weakness as well due to requiring Arcane Secrets (which your agents can steal or corrupt) to craft, and if you get your hands on one they can be corrupted to produce shadow instead. Finally, if you don't antagonize the elves directly, they are prone to isolationism and can be manipulated into xenophobia-fuelled wars, dividing the forces of good even further.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Outside of being created with necromancy, the Ravenous Dread are otherwise wholly unremarkable zombies (kills add to number, slow, stupid, the works). However, they do have the unique ability to raise the already deceased regardless of how long the corpses have been lying around rotting.
• Pheromones: Vinerva will tempt mankind with her tainted gifts. Mankind will accept, proving itself unworthy and inviting Vinerva into its heart to work its doom. And if mankind doesn't, Vinerva will pheromone-bomb it until it does. Vinerva is cool with it either way.
• The Plague: This is one of your tools to attack the human world, and it can be very effective, as plagues can spread, forcing multiple enemy heroes to waste turns fighting them instead of hunting your agents, and if you have an agent skilled in necromancy it can go From Bad to Worse with a Zombie Apocalypse.
• Plot Armor: The Chosen One will No-Sell shadow and menace, and "except the Chosen One" is a common and expected restriction of powers that affect heroes, even when the only difference between a hero and another is being the Chosen One.
• Puppeteer Parasite: The Cordyceps Hive Mind's fungal spores infect both heroes and the general populace, allowing it to influence them or turn them into drones to wander around and spread the infection.
• Random Event: These will often happen while your agents are doing a task, creating a sudden opportunity or (more often) inconvenience to spice things up.
• Restart the World: Iastur's goal, to correct the flaws he found in the current one; it's explicit that if he does, he will inevitably decide the next world is flawed, as he is a Mad God who is incapable of fully correcting himself.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: You can terrify or goad a hero who flees from battle with your agent to change their liking of combat and personal danger. Head games are often better than killing them, since dead heroes are automatically replaced but you only get so many agents and they won't survive going on murder sprees.
• Skewed Priorities: Likes and dislikes are your best friend when they come up in your favor. You can end up with the Chosen One running across the map to fight a single orc upstart while the sun is blood-red, the Alliance is burning shadowed cities in a desperate attempt to hold back the darkness, and coming in the other direction is a hero being stalked by a naked old man who screams endlessly bringing madness to all who hear him. Iastur deals with these and is considered easier than the tutorial god, She Who Will Feast.
• Snakes Are Sinister: She Who Will Feast is a snake Elder God, and the most overtly-dark of the Elder Gods, with powers directly linked to Shadow and a desire to devour the world. As you don't need to understand politics or the desires and sins of men to cover everything in darkness, she's also the tutorial gods.
• Soul Eating: The Harvester agent's schtick. Deceased heroes leave their souls behind, and the Harvester can consume these to power his abilities.
• Standard Fantasy Races: Humans must be present in every playthrough, but there are toggles for Orcs and Elves, both of whom have distinct game mechanics from the Human settlements. Dwarves arrived with the The Horrors Beneath DLC.
• Start My Own: The author made Shadows Behind The Throne due to That Which Sleeps failing to come out. Then he made Shadows Behind The Throne 2, then he made this.
• Straw Nihilist: Iastur is the clearest example, but is unique in that he might have a legitimate point as his lore states that the world using him is a simulation he created to entertain beings higher than himself (namely, the players), meaning that the only reason the game world exists is to be destroyed.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Elves in the game are unaging, hard to enshadow, difficult to infiltrate, are immune to plague, and devastating combatants. However, these same traits are also their biggest weaknesses because they cause severe complacency that leaves their stability dangling by a thread. See, their society requires a Wayfinder hero to appoint rulers, while elvish heroes can only be created by a sovereign, and thanks to their longevity, elves are in no hurry to designate heirs, unlike humans. So if the player knocks off both the Wayfinder and the sovereign at roughly the same time and then starts killing rulers, the elves will be almost completely eliminated as a threat due to entering a prolonged political deadlock as a result of their inflexibility.
• Survivor's Guilt: Rulers and heroes can have relationships to other characters, and killing those characters may drive them towards despair... or to seek vengeance against the murderer, or even their entire family. The latter can be exploited by the Courtier to instigate blood feuds that often end up ensnaring entire countries in bloody conflicts, leaving you free to do what you want while they're distracted.
• Tendrils of Darkness: The visual indication of a settlement's infiltration level.
• Villain Protagonist: You control one of several dark gods, and your goal is to dominate and/or exterminate humanity.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: Like Crusader Kings, the map is littered with characters all doing their own thing. Unlike Crusader Kings, they don't really work towards anything at first. Rulers manage unrest and collect taxes. Heroes keep the monsters down and pitch in when rulers get in trouble. Wars, killings, and shaking the throne of your superior are possible, but (orcs and your own intervention aside) it's rare to find anyone with enough of a grudge. They'll keep trying to right the boat as you work to make the wheels come off. The exception is the Chosen One, who knows you for what you are and can spread that awareness to rulers and other heroes, found the Alliance to proactively fight the shadow, and call conclaves you have to disrupt.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Both Vinerva and Ophanim are supposed to be played this way.
• Walking Wasteland: The First Daughter, who begins destroying the world with her mere presence if she is summoned. Fittingly, as she is also an Enemy to All Living Things.
  Life holds her at bay; she cannot walk on fertile soil, but her very gaze is death to all that grows, flies, or walks on the Earth.
• We Are Everywhere: Infiltrating points of interest in the free settlements is the bread and butter of your agents' work, as completed infiltrations not only help Shadow spread more quickly, but also create opportunities to empower your agents, acquire resources, and make it easier to infiltrate adjacent settlements that might otherwise take too long to infiltrate normally. Infiltrations are also nearly impossible to root out for any nation not in the Alliance. Needless to say, it pays for you to aim for this trope and do as much infiltration as possible.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The Madness modifier affects how likely or unlikely it is for kingdoms and heroes to join The Alliance, much like Shadow does. However, if the player manages to drive those already in the alliance to zero percent sanity it's entirely possible to provoke them into irrationally attacking each other, tearing it apart through infighting, and stalling The Chosen One and sane heroes by forcing them to try and improve relations. The Courtier and Trickster agents can also frame rulers and heroes for their own crimes, tricking them into starting feuds and turning on each other even without driving them mad first.
• When the Planets Align: The game begins when the stars first come right (and for most gods, a Supplicant prays to them at the Elder Tomb). From there, you have 500 turns to conquer the world before the great conjunction ends and you go back to sleep in defeat.
• Zerg Rush: The Cordyceps Hive Mind is specialized in creating many Drones and eventually soldiers.
• Zombie Apocalypse: One of the most devastating combos in the game is to start The Plague in a kingdom, then, after the death toll has risen to satisfactory numbers, use an agent with high enough arcane power to raise the dead. Done properly, the Ravenous Dead will potter about the plague-ridden region, adding more and more to their number until they split off into additional hordes before upgrading to the still-living. Each horde also has a menace rating that dictates their priority to The Alliance, however by starting in a plague-ravaged region, they build it very slowly (on account of the population being too dead to report it) so The Alliance won't even notice before the hordes are destroying their cities. That being said, you will need a while to get an agent with enough skill in death magic (and that risks a magic arms race) to actually raise said zombie armies, and you'll also have to make sure the plague itself doesn't get cured too quickly or you won't have enough corpses to work with. But it's superbly effective if you can get all the pieces into place.

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