The Thaumaturge from 11 Bit Studios is a game that combines a couple of genres into one. An eclectic mixture that grips you from the get-go. The game features a narrative that’s dripping with some truly captivating ideas and storytelling but does it hold up against other titles in the mystery-solving genre?
11 Bit Studios and Fool’s Theory have created a game that certainly looks like it will be worth diving into so let’s get into what makes The Thaumaturge worth checking out.
In The Thaumaturge, players will take on the role of Wiktor, the titular thaumaturge. While initially a very slow burn, once the story gets going, The Thaumaturge is quite enjoyable. The game kicks off with Victor travelling to a remote village in search of a healer to cure what ails him. Upon arrival, the healer assists you but things slowly escalate and Wiktor gets drawn into something a lot more sinister.
Without spoiling too much, The Thaumaturge involves travelling to locations, speaking to characters, and discovering clues and objects worth investigating while fighting enemies along the way. Yes it’s formulaic. Yes, it’s been done before. However, the game uses these mechanics in its own unique way drawing on a rich background of lore and worldbuilding that it crafts from the start. Players will want to know more about the world. They’ll want to investigate every single thing.
Learning more about the game’s world is where most of the fun is to be had and if you’re a fan of games that really make an effort to onboard you into their world, The Thaumaturge will certainly appeal to you.
Moving on to the actual gameplay elements in the title, players will have access to certain skills which apply to various Thaumaturgy elements. These being “Heart”, “Mind”, “Deed” and “Word”. As you progress throughout the game, you’ll gain points which you can apply to your Thaumaturgy skill tree into each of the elements which will grant you new skills or abilities in battle. Choosing to focus on one particular skill tree will greatly affect how you battle and how you decipher clues in the game world. It’s up to you to decide in which skill tree you’d like to invest.
As you progress through the game, you’ll also unlock new “Salutors”. These are effectively monsters or demons that you can control in battle and are tied to specific Thaumaturgy skill trees. Later on in the game, once you have access to more Salutor, it’s oddly reminiscent of Pokemon since you’ll have access to them and their skills in battle and can swap between them. Gotta catch ‘em all eh?
In the game world itself, players will have an isometric view and will run around smaller maps in locations searching for clues and people to talk to. You can also snap your fingers to trigger your perception skill which highlights the path to your objective as well as highlights interactable clues and objects. The difficulty level of The Thaumaturge is just right with battles requiring some thought without being too hard to handle. Solving mysteries is also fairly straightforward with players being able to piece together clues themselves quite easily.
There are some very light role-playing game elements in the game with players being able to choose specific voice options which have an effect on characters. Either influencing them or yourself in some way. For the most part, though, the game is quite linear throughout since you’ll be piecing together clues and progressing towards an end goal once you’ve unlocked enough options in conversations based on your investigations.
The actual combat gameplay in the game involves turn-based battles. Players will select an attack for Wiktor to perform and an attack for one of his Salutors to perform. Enemies will also attack you and have a “Focus” state that may need to be broken for them to “Breakdown”. Once in a “Breakdown” state, they become a lot more vulnerable to attacks and can be quite easily defeated. You can also augment your attacks with upgrades which boost their damage or impart other special effects onto the attack for additional customization.
Again, these are tried and trusted game mechanics we’ve seen in other titles but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing at all. Where the combat does falter however lies with the fact that battles quickly become a tedious affair since you’ll be fighting enemies that feel very similar and waiting for animations to play out slows things down even further. There is an option in the menus to speed things up a bit but it’s still not enough.
Graphically, The Thaumaturge is very visually appealing. The game is Unreal Engine 5-powered and looks fantastic. There’s been a lot of attention to detail paid here and the Salutor’s themselves look quite creepy. The environmental design of the game is great and the character models and animations are well done too. Unfortunately, though, The Thaumaturge is not without issue on PC. The game is prone to crashing and this is most likely due to Unreal Engine 5 bugs that need to be ironed out.
The soundtrack of the game features music that fits the theme of a war-torn Eastern Europe with supernatural undertones. Voice acting on the other hand is a mixed bag with some characters that sound a bit out of place. Wiktor himself sounds fine though and gives off a very disgruntled tortured soul vibe which works remarkably well throughout the game.
Overall, The Thaumaturge is a solid mystery-solving turn-based isometric narrative-driven game. It ticks the right checkboxes and has a lot of solid ideas with execution that just falls a tad short in a couple of areas. Given the fact that the game is still being updated and polished though, the crashing bugs should hopefully be resolved soon. It’s well worth playing the game and it will keep you entertained for roughly around 25 hours or so depending on your playstyle and how long it takes you to solve some of the mysteries.
Give the game a try, it may not be the best in the genre but it certainly was entertaining. Oh, snapping your fingers (to trigger your perception skill) all the time while running around is oddly very satisfying!
The Thaumaturge Launch Trailer
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