Everything I know about the French Revolution comes from two works of literature: Hilary Mantel’s brilliant book Fire Door A place of greater safetyAND Kate Beaton Webcomics. Neither Mantel nor Beaton mention mechs, which are a major feature of Imugi’s novel “ideological” turn-based strategy game Bonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution. I personally feel like I’m terribly misinformed. Kate, Hilary – I’ve been quoting you at parties for years, and it seems like all along people have been quietly judging me for my ignorance about the role giant clockwork soldiers played in the fall of the Bastille.
Studio Imugi is comprised of veterans of prolific Canadian indie publisher Kitfox Games and the creators of Sea Of Stars Sabotage. This is their debut game and it’s very much a Kitfox production – a nerdy, narrative, historical sandbox. Here’s the announcement trailer…
…and here’s the background from the press release. The game begins in 1789 and casts you as either Céline or César Bonaparte – two seemingly fictional versions of the notorious megalomaniac Napoleon. The game maintains some historical grounding, but lets you choose your own path through the events of the revolution. There doesn’t have to be a revolution to begin with. Guillotines are so tactlessin the end. You can choose to defend Marie Antoinette and her ilk from the mob by sending your troops to force-feed the peasants a rhetorical cake. Or you can side with the moderates and try to reform the system somehow. Hey, it worked out so well for us Britons!
Players will apparently be able to “see real-time politics on the battlefield,” but the trailer doesn’t really explain what that means. It looks like a game of two halves: hexagonal and turn-based battles featuring the aforementioned mechanical Colossi, and tense, branching dialogues with luminaries of the era like Robespierre. There’s also a paper world map with army figures that looks very Paradox Interactive-esque.
It is set to be released in early 2025 and is expected to Steam page. The presentation gives me a lackluster whiff of Suzerain, which is promising, but I’m a little worried about the mechs, which seem like an aside, sneaking in behind the colon in the title. Or worse, a gimmick. In other ways, it doesn’t feel like a steampunk world. Maybe Mantel and Beaton were right, though.
