You might have noticed all the hubbub over at Mantic Games about League of Infamy. This game marks the second big collaboration between Needy Cat and Mantic, and is a cooperatish dungeon crawler turned on its head, where instead of the usual trope of playing a band of adventuring heroes, you take on the role of a bunch of no-good bad guys assaulting a series of Elven keeps! You need to work together for victory, but the League’s a competitive place, and if you find a few opportunities to benefit yourself at the cost of the others… well, they were mugs for not doing it first, right?
League of Infamy was a joy to write. We had a wealth of influences to draw on when designing the cornerstones of the game, with Mantic already boasting a number of dungeon-crawl games which we could plunder for ideas. We made the decision very early on to make sure this felt like a Mantic game, so people who have played their previous offerings will see some strong similarities here. In hindsight, the game’s core engine most resembles a cross between Star Saga and Hellboy, although there were a lot of extra bells and whistles added, of course!.
We wanted to make the game an interesting challenge for all the players, and very true to its (utterly delicious) theme. As it was joining a surprisingly long line of games set in the world of Mantica, we had the opportunity to subvert players’ expectations and take a closer look at some aspects of the game world that haven’t had much scrutiny. In particular, we wanted to make all of the Villain characters slightly skewed takes on the existing miniatures. After all, they’re in the League of Infamy, a secret order that only recruits the most exceptional ne’er-do-wells, so we kept asking “what makes them different from the norm?”
One of the most interesting challenges was the development of the Keep Master - the “good guy” player, taking the role that is normally filled in these sorts of games by an “Evil Overlord” of some sort. Having played a lot of dungeon crawlers where this role can feel like a chore, we spent a lot of time figuring out how to make the Keep Master an active player who is directly competing against the Villains. They have a very different experience of the game, playing cards to confound the Villains and controlling the Keep’s Defenders. They’re playing a resource management game with their limited pool of Alarm Tokens - do they fill the Keep with Reinforcements, or lay cunning traps? Do they fortify the keep’s locks, or invite the Villains inside then punish them with heavily armed Defenders? When do they bring their hardest hitters into play? The real skill of the Keep Master is in encouraging the Villains to give in to backstabbing and bickering. A Keep Master who can exploit that moment of disarray (which will always come eventually, trust us) can turn a disastrous defeat into a resounding victory. There is nothing so satisfying as seeing the Villains fail because of hubris - after all, they’re the bad guys!
League of Infamy will be coming to Kickstarter soon - make sure you’re signed up to the Needy Cat Newsletter if you’d like to know more!