In 1999, designer David Dunham and his studio A Sharp released King of Dragon Pass. Part mythic fantasy RPG, part cattle management sim, King of Dragon Pass was initially a commercial failure—but it gradually amassed a cult following, and is remembered today by those with excellent taste as one of the finest narrative experiences in videogames.
Later this year, Dunham and A Sharp are launching a new twist on their narrative expertise with Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists, a surreal, replayable set of afterlife adventures that denies easy classification. Its publisher, Kitfox Games, calls it “a systemic storybook experience;” its Steam tags say it’s a strategy RPG. Dunham, who considers it a “tactical narrative game,” said in an interview with PC Gamer that there’s a good reason for the ambiguity: Thousand Hells is the first of its kind.
“There’s really nothing else quite like it,” Dunham said.
According to Dunham, Thousand Hells’ closest comparison is I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, a game where your character’s formative experiences become collectible cards used to resolve narrative challenges. Thousand Hells likewise stops the normal narrative action and enters a separate style of game to resolve conflicts or encounters—but in place of cards, you’re deploying the traits possessed by the party members you’ve hired on at the Eternal City, a fantasy Byzantium that serves as the gateway to the constellation of underworlds below.
You might have gathered your band of would-be hellfarers to reclaim a queen’s murdered sons from the courts of the dead in the Great Below, a gloomy realm where ancestors wait for the sacrificial libations sent by their descendants—inspired, Dunham said, by ancient Mesopotamian beliefs of an afterlife where “you just kind of hung out and hoped that people gave you drinks.”