Video Game / Siralim

New Duty: describe the titular game here to boost Siralim's notability.

Siralim is a Role-Playing Game developed and published by Thylacine Studios. The king of the kingdom of Siralim has recently passed away. You are his successor, and as newly-crowned monarch, your goal isn't merely to sit on your throne looking regal, but to use your skills as a mage to summon creatures and gather resources in other worlds to build up your lands. Without even time to dry your tears, the people of Siralim look to you to take up his mantle and forge your kingdom ahead into the future.

Gameplay unfolds into something of a a mixture of the monster taming and training of Pokémon, the turn-based Role-Playing Game combat of Dragon Quest, and the Dungeon Crawling of Rogue, with trace elements of other genres to create something that doesn't quite fit solidly into any one genre. Starting with a single monster and a handful of supplies, teleport into all manner of alien realms, scouring it for resources to grow your castle and more monsters to use as recruits in your kingdom's army. (Or just your party, as it were.) Each new realm you enter is procedurally generated and has a particular theme such as dungeon or Fluffy Cloud Heaven, all with their own set pieces, treasures, hazards, and gimmicks.

Combat plays out in turn-based fashion which wouldn't be particularly noteworthy were it not for the unpredictability and variety of enemy encounters. Spamming the attack command will work for a while, but it's more likely to get you killed once a larger variety of monsters with their own equipment, spells, and abilities start to appear. Here the meat and potatoes of Siralim's combat system will shine as each of the over 250 monsters has different abilities and passive skills. Identifying threats on the fly and responding to them becomes a necessary skill as some combos can lead into a brutal Curb-Stomp Battle for your team unless you respond properly. Likewise, the tables can be easily turned on your enemies with party lineups that can combo into each other such as one creature landing a killing blow, powering up and healing from it, another ally causing the corpse of the freshly slain enemy to explode and damage all others, a Mighty Glacier to effortlessly absorb all attacks leveled against it, a fourth party member automatically damaging any foe of a certain element class to heal your party instead of hurting it, a fifth dedicated to causing obscene amounts of damage, then gaining extra turns more times than not, and finally a backup that revives a friendly when it attacks. If that isn't enough, your character still has an arsenal of spells at his or her disposal to level the playing field with. The sheer Combinatorial Explosion when it comes to party building and equipping provides a great deal of replayability. Good thing there's no hard end state or level cap.

Oh, and that's not mentioning building up your kingdom, crafting new equipment for your critters, performing elaborate rituals to summon vastly stronger versions of normal monsters, fighting in an arena, and gambling your hard-earned loot away to pointy-hatted dwarves. It's probably best to clear your schedule.

A sequel, Siralim 2, entered early access on May 27, 2016 and was released on August 12, 2016, boasting streamlined gameplay, roughly double the roster of monsters, and new features such as a pantheon of gods to jockey for the favor of. Siralim 3 entered early access on May 25 2018, and was released on October 16th, 2018, streamlining and refining the game's formula and balance even further, as well as adding new features such as Monster Breeding and Itherian Realms. The third entry in the series continues the plot established in the second game, with the kingdom of Siralim's monarch (the player character from 2) having gone rogue and attempting to subjugate the entire world, the player being charged with stopping their mad ambitions. A fourth game in the series, Siralim Ultimate, was announced on December 11, 2019.

Tropes found in the whole Series

• Action Bomb: Mouths of Hell will explode if they provoke, dealing double their current health.
• All in a Row: Your party of colorful critters dutifully march behind you like little ducklings.
• All There in the Manual: Or at least All There In The Library, as the castles feature expansive libraries that explain the game's many mechanics in depth.
• Betting Mini-Game: Dwarves sit in your tavern and are occasionally found in realms which allow you to play a game of High/Low to gamble one of your resources.
• Bleak Level: Death realms are appropriately grim, with walls made up of countless bones, graves of dead monsters, and nothing living outside of your party and any monsters or NPCs that may roam the area. In later games, this turns out to be known as The Path of the Damned, ruled over by Erebyss, the goddess of darkness.
• Booze-Based Buff: Depending on exactly how hammered a monster is, they can gain bonuses such as increased attack power at the cost of defense.
• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Leveling up or completing Duties grants you Royalty Points, which serve the same purpose as allotting skill points to perks in other games. They get renamed to Deity Points from Siralim 2 onwards.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Dungeon realms clearly have plenty of it going on between the copious iron maidens and torture racks with skeletons still strapped to them. Given these are the realm of Tartarith, God of Punishment, it should come as no surprise.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Having a Total Party Kill causes your character to teleport home in a panic and the only penalty is a loss of power balance, easily regained with a few fights in a level 1 realm. That is, of course unless you elected to play in hardcore mode.
• Death Is Cheap: Monster deaths are common and completely without lasting consequence. As long as you win a battle, even your dead monsters will receive experience and be returned to full health as if nothing happened.
• Dungeon Shop: You will occasionally come across travelling merchants in any of the realms. They must first be unlocked before you can encounter them in Siralim 3, but the trope still applies.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Done a little differently than most games. Each monster has a different "class" that they fit into, and each class tends to have weaker defense to one other. (e.g. Nature creatures often have low Life Defense.) In general Death < Life < Nature < Sorcery < Chaos < Death.
• Endless Game: You could play until the heat death of the universe and you'll never see a hint of a defined end goal.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: There are over 300 different breeds of monsters, each with their own stats and special abilities.
• Guilt-Based Gaming: The Treasure Golem just wants a friend, as the game's narration passive-aggressively tells you whenever you kill one. Becomes a Running Gag by Siralim 3, where the gods themselves (including even the likes of Tartarith) and even the game's developer will call you out for your monstrous behavior.
• Instant-Win Condition: Averted. Even if the enemy party is dead too, if all of your monsters die, you still flee in a warding spell and take the wipe penalty.
• Item Crafting: A simplified version, where you can a) collect 5 pieces of an artifact that are always present on every level, or b) collect materials until you have enough of one kind to create an amplifier that fills in a certain stat slot on those artifacts. You'll generally not have to combine multiple materials or anything like that.
• Justified Tutorial: The castle quests that are enabled by default in 1 and 2 teach you the basics of the game under the guise of your advisors guiding you through your new responsibilities as king or queen.
• King Mook:
  • Certain Duties and scenarios within certain realms will pit you against a "Nether" version of a normal monster, which has considerably better stats than normal.
  • The Pandemonium King is basically a souped up Mouth of Hell.
• Lethal Lava Land: Chaos realms could be either this or Planet Heck depending on interpretation. In later games these realms, known properly as Great Pandemonium, turn out to be the realm of Vulcanar, the God of Fire.
• Level in the Clouds: Life Realms take place on continents made up of semi-solid clouds, including trees with cloudy foliage! In later games, this turns out to be the Azure Dream, the realm controlled by Surathli, the goddess of light.
• Luck-Based Mission: Due to the random nature of enemy parties, it is possible to get disproportionately powerful combinations of enemies that will mop the floor with your party. This is rarely a problem unless you get an unfortunate sigil boss.
• The Lost Woods: Nature realms take the form of vast forests filled with colorful mushroom and plant life. These realms would be redefined in later games as The Swamplands, domain of Meraxis, the God of Bliss.
• Medieval European Fantasy: Castle Siralim (and in 3, Castle Nex) itself is styled in this manner. Its tileset essentially only consists of stone floors and red carpets, while there are some fully-armoured knights running about, and European-looking wenches serve in the tavern while dwarves gamble.
• Metal Slime: Two of them, the Treasure Golem and the entire Dumpling race; both will try to avoid combat on the overworld and will run if given the chance when encountered. Treasure Golems drop massive amounts of treasure when killed, while Dumplings give massive amounts of experience.
• Mook Medic: Various creatures can act in either the healing role, or the resurrecting one, both on your side, and the hostile one. A potential early example is the way Ancestral Phoenix gives one-off 50% Rebirth chance to all its allies. Then, Unicorn Vivifiers easily top that, as every successful attack of their has 50% chance of reviving their allies (including other Vivifiers).
• No Indoor Voice: TORUN ONLY EVER SPEAKS IN %$@&ING UPPER CASE. WHAT THE $@^$ ELSE DID YOU EXPECT FROM THE GOD OF ANGER?
• Luck Stat: Two varieties. In addition to a monster's luck stat which determines the frequency and power of critical hits or glancing blows, there is also power balance, which among other things influences how much loot you obtain. These are both done away with entirely in Siralim 3.
• Randomly Generated Levels: Every realm you enter is procedurally built from scratch and you cannot return to any specific place beyond a simple town portal spell.
• Retraux: The game sports an art and music style that wouldn't seem at all out of place running on an SNES.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The player character in 1 and 2 is the ruling monarch of Siralim, and a ruler's duty in this 'verse includes acting as its main defender. While the player rules over a different kingdom in the third game, the trope is still very much in effect.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Snow levels, natch. These would later turn out to be the Frostbite Caverns, the realm of Azural, God of Frost.
• Universal Currency: Zig-zagged. All the merchants, craftsmen, and gamblers of the realms each accept payment in the various resources you find, but none of them are exactly money.
• Violation of Common Sense: In the Sorcery realms (later known as Refuge of the Magi), you can find cauldrons with seemingly-liquid contents, that are actually filled with granite (one of the five resources in the game.)
• You Monster!: The gods react this way whenever the player kills a Treasure Golem.

Tropes exclusive to Siralim 1

• Excuse Plot: The plot in Siralim 1 is practically nonexistent. The previous king died of old age, and now as the heir to the throne, you must take up the mantle and guide Siralim. That's it.
• Featureless Protagonist: Other than a name and gender, your character has no defining features as they're completely hidden under his or her robes. Averted in later entries in the series that allow the monarch to change their appearance at a tailor.
• Final Death Mode: Hardcore mode is an option on starting a new game. If you lose all of your monsters, your character is deleted.
• Locked in the Dungeon: Dungeon realms take this form, complete with gibbets, torture racks, and iron maidens. Unseen prisoners also occasionally influence battles slightly, but are never elaborated on nor ever seen.

Tropes exclusive to Siralim 2

• Big Bad: Misery, the would-be God.
• Breaking Speech: Quite a few of the bosses are rather fond of these before fighting.
  • First, the Whispering Shade tries to break the monarch by claiming that Siralim is far from the ideal utopia it appears to be and is in fact a sinful Wretched Hive that deserves to be destroyed. The monarch, for their credit, pays it little heed. Given the events of Siralim 3 however, the shade may have been right all along.
  • Second, the Unguided claims that the monarch is doomed to be betrayed and overthrown by their own subjects. Unlike the last time, this seems to have an effect on the monarch, as they relay the encounter to their adviser Damaos, who assures them that such a thing would never happen.
• Breakout Character: Of all the gods introduced in Siralim 2, Torun quickly became the fanbase's favorite due to his hilarious personality and dialogue, so much so that he replaced Vertraag as the player's main guide in 3.
• Deity of Human Origin: After defeating Misery at the end of the main quest, the monarch's victory combined with the effects of all the Nether Orbs they gathered transforms them into a God in their own right.
• Excuse Plot: 2's main quest is pretty barebones. There's an evil demigod plotting to destroy/take over your kingdom, and you must gather Nether Orbs in order to gain enough power to defeat him. That's pretty much it.

Tropes exclusive to Siralim 3

• All There in the Manual: A new feature in Siralim 3 is the addition of lore entries for every creature, that can be viewed in the player's Knowledge index. Most of them tell a little bit about the creature, and certain monster families have fragments of stories for each monster, so to see the whole story you must collect every monster that belongs to that family.
• Anti-Frustration Features: One major change to this game was that any items you picked up in a Realm only became usable when you clear that Realm. Later versions added a special fountain that allows you to instantly gain the items you find in a Realm once you've defeated a certain number of enemies.
• Avenging the Villain: Emlai, the starting creature for Life Mages, is revealed in his lore entry to be the son of Misery, the previous game's Big Bad, and he's helping Nex purely because its his best chance of avenging his father's death.
• Big Bad: Some time after the events of Siralim 2, the player character goes mad with power and attempts to take over the world. You play as the ruler of Nex, the last unconquered bastion against Siralim's apparently near-successful bid at world conquest.
• Big Damn Heroes: In the final battle of the story, just when the Siralim Monarch is about to overwhelm you with the corrupted Gods, Torun, who is revealed to be immune to the Monarch's corruption, comes in and lends a hand.
• Breaking Speech: As in Siralim 2, these are found quite often. Hebron and Damaos are particularly fond of them.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: At several points in the story, the player is directly mind controlled into slaying unambiguously innocent creatures on behalf of the gods. This is your first clue that something is very, very wrong.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: As the Power Balance system was discarded in Siralim 3, the punishment for defeat is to be teleported back to Nex, and you lose any items you had collected in the realm you were defeated in. It is still not particularly harsh, though it can bite if you happen to find a rare item and get defeated before you can leave the area.
• The Corrupter: The Cyrha, a mid-game boss. However, this turns out to be a lie told to the player to remove a threat to Siralim's power.
• The Dragon: Hebron and Damaos, the advisers of Siralim from the first two games are still faithfully serving their kingdom as generals, and show up twice as boss fights. Judging by their appearances, they've also been transformed into undead monsters by their monarch.
• Excuse Plot: Played with. While 3's plot is by far the most elaborate in the series, dealing with both the war between Nex and Siralim and the mystery of just why the Siralim monarch went mad and the gods' role in all of this, the plot is still very much window dressing for the game's primary gameplay.
• Justified Tutorial: You start the game being assisted by the gods and your adviser Ilberd as Siralim's army launches an attack on your castle, and they teach you the basics of how to play the game as you fight off the invading forces.
• Good Counterpart: In many ways, the Nex Monarch is this to the Siralim Monarch. Both of them were enlisted by the gods to combat a monumental threat to their kingdom and all of Rodia, and to combat the threat they rely on the Nether Orbs, which steadily grant them godlike power. Both also began to develop a corrupting dark side based on their traumatic experiences in the war against their enemies (The Siralim Monarch feeling they were abandoned by the gods after Misery's defeat, the Nex Monarch being manipulated into murdering innocent Creatures). However, while the Siralim Monarch became Drunk with Power from the power the Nether Orbs granted them and became utterly consumed by their anger towards the gods abandoning them, the Nex Monarch is able to keep their new powers in check, makes peace with the gods, and is successfully able to quell their inner demons. Literally, as their inner demons are in fact a late game boss fight.
• Good Is Not Nice: Torun is just as much of a foul mouthed prick as ever, but he's the only god who hasn't succumbed to Siralim's brainwashing, and ends up pulling a Big Damn Heroes during the final battle against the Siralim Monarch and the corrupted gods.
• Rage Against the Heavens: This turns out to be the Siralim Monarch's main motivation. The gods essentially used and manipulated them and their kingdom in order to defeat Misery (whose turn to evil turned out to have been because of their mistreatment of him), and promptly abandoned the Monarch before Misery's body was even cold. Infuriated by this abandonment, the Monarch resolved to depose the Gods and the other kingdoms, seeking to rule Rodia as its sole Monarch and god.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Siralim 3 reveals that The Siralim Monarch's ascension to godhood after defeating Misery has turned them into just as bad a tyrant as Misery himself was.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Go ahead, kill that friendly, smiling Treasure Golem. It's made of treasure, after all. It's only Rodia's equivalent of Santa Claus and likes to bring gifts to children. Killing it nets you a long series of messages about how a being of pure joy has met a cruel end at your hand, and the world is now a much darker place for its loss.

Tropes exclusive to Siralim Ultimate

• Another Side, Another Story: The game's main storyline is essentially a retelling of the main conflict of 3, but from Siralim's perspective and with a few twists.
• Art Evolution: Most of the creatures from previous games have been completely re-designed with new art.
• Big Bad: Lucius, the King of Nex who breaks the century-long peace with Siralim to take over Rodia with the Ultimate Nether Orb. Except not really. The real Big Bad is Caliban, who manipulates Siralim and Nex into fighting each other so he can claim the Nether Orbs for himself.
• Bittersweet Ending: Caliban is defeated and peace between Siralim and Nex is restored, but Nex itself is in ruins due to Caliban's manipulations (though the Gods and the Siralim Monarch vow to help Lucius rebuild), and the Siralim Monarch loses Hebron and Damaos, their retainers and childhood friends, due to Caliban's machinations.
• Boring, but Practical: The Generous enchantment takes up one of the three precious enchantment slots for a spell gem, but it allows your entire team to use that spell. Where this is particularly useful is for spells like Recharge (to restore your teams’ spell gem charges in case they run out), Greater Dispel (in case your party gets afflicted with debuffs you do not want), Astral Dimension (if you need to cast your spells but they got sealed), Arbitration (to take your enemies’ precious buffs for yourself), resurrection spells (in case your actual healer goes down), and Contagion (to get rid of enemies’ dangerous minions), among other examples. You could specialize your monsters and make them unique… or help all your creatures be safe and have less of a risk of anything bad happening to them.
• Continuity Nod: In the introduction, Hebron and Damaos can be seen being accompanied by the creatures their 3 counterparts became during their final battles with the Nex Monarch.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: After the main quest is completed, the Nex Knights in the Kingdom of Heretics are replaced with generic Hostile Knights.
• An Interior Designer Is You: You can now fully customize your Castle with various pieces of furniture and NPCs, which run from purely cosmetic to actually enhancing your playstyle.
• Legacy Character: If this is a chronological sequel, then Siralim's staff all have the exact same names and jobs as the previous generation.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: A few specializations completely change how the game plays.
  • The Animator focuses around a single monster who is the lynchpin of your team, who can absorb the traits of your other monsters.
  • The Grovetender also focuses around a single monster, but in a way that's very different from the Animator in that they grow more powerful the more buffs and stat boosts they receive from their allies.
  • The Druid focuses on having a much smaller party than usual, with 1-3 monsters instead of the regular 6.
  • The Purgatorian allows creatures to continue to fighting after they're dead.
  • The Spellweaver can collect "infusions" from different creatures that can be used for powerful abilities.
  • The Fanatic can use multiple Avatars at once.
• Palette Swap: Fused monsters inherit their parent's pallete, which can lead to some... interesting results. You can choose to have your creatures keep their original palette, however.
• Prestige Class: The Fanatic is treated as such, as you need to have unlocked at least one Avatar to be able to unlock it. Considering the Fanatic's main draw is the ability to field more than one Avatar in your party, its deserved.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Lucius is all but stated to be the player character from 3, presumably having remained alive for the past hundred years through the power of the Nether Orbs he collected while fighting the Siralim Monarch's villainous grandfather.
• Remember the New Guy?: Your main guide and assistant this time around is Everett, who despite first appearing in this game, is stated to have been at the Siralim Monarch's side since the very beginning.
• Running Gag: The Siralim Monarch has a bad tendency to piss themselves while sleeping.
• Video Game Caring Potential: It is now possible to spare Treasure Golems and Dumplings by forfeiting the battle. Doing so boots you back to Siralim as if you were defeated, but Everett compliments you for your compassion and you get to keep your item rate bonus.

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