I predict I likely won’t have fully gotten to grips with the strategy of Sultan’s Game for several more hours, but since I’m considering investing that time - after a morning spent card shuffling and deciding whomst to bone and whomst to murder in its Steam demo - I’m compelled to spotlight it. It’s deeply imperfect and willfully obtuse, but also absolutely fascinating. I’ll ground you with a slightly wonky and dull allusion to Cultist Simulator , then guide you through in more or less the order I experienced it.
As we progress, you may feel steadily more disorientated. It’ll be like a brewery tour I’ve somehow inherited control of by murder-boning the previous owners. Onward! The art itself is gorgeous, sitting somewhere between Hades ’s multi-hued, drive-by horniness and Yoshitaka Amano’s 1001 Nights , and the soundtrack also does a great job scene setting.
For the tutorial - which, I must add, is only really a tutorial for about 30% of the game - you take control of the Sultan. He’s bored of all earthly pleasures, until one day a magician arrives at the door with a box of cards. The cards come in four flavours: carnality, bloodshed, conquest, and extravagance.
Each also has a value like 'gold' or 'silver'. To fulfil a card, you need to find a target of equal value to enact it upon. There’s also an option to attempt to bone the tutorial magician, which I picked out of curiosity only .
It doesn’t work, anyway. That the Sultan is a real piece of shit.
