Despot's Game is a roguelike autobattler about refrigerators, pretzels, and dark gods

Sad, naked humans wake up in an underground facility and have to fight for their lives. No, it's not what happens in my basement every weekend, it's the upcoming roguelike autobattler and tactics of Despot's Game. It's something new for the autobattler, a clever-looking procedurally generated PvE puzzle that forces your hand to try out new strategies as the enemy mix changes, rather than just building for a meta against other people.

In it, you customize and built up your team of lowly people as they try to fight their way out of the facility in arena combat. You place your people on the field and equip them with specific weapons, from ninja gear and magic books to stale pretzels and damage-soaking refrigerators.

If you make it to the end of the labyrinth, your team goes up against the end-game builds of other players in an arena match, and only the team that wins will get to make their escape. But to make it there, your team has to beat zombies, mutant cabbages, robots, three-headed dogs, and more. There's... a lot going on in this game and it's low-key hysterical.

A demo of Despot's Game is on Steam right now, if that piques your interest.

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An image from autobattler tactics roguelike Despot's Game — (Image credit: Konfa Games)

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.