It’s not often that we get tactical turn-based games themed around Northern European aesthetics and fantasy. Oftentimes the classic tactical turn-based games were themed around Japanese fantasy, while the Western games that were made thereafter were either sci-fi like X-Com or modern military games like Jagged Alliance. Well, Critical Forge wants to do something most Western developers are loathe to do in this day and age and that’s give gamers a proper European fantasy game that isn’t mired in the sort of regressive sociological philosophies being employed in real life that is destroying Western culture.

The name of the game is Forged of Blood, and it sees players taking their fictional European nation and attempting to conquer their nearest rivals in a fantasy setting that combines the shiny allure classically themed medieval armor with the unpredictable nature of arcane magic.

You can get a glimpse of what the game is like with the trailer below, which reveals that Forged of Blood will be made available over on the Steam store starting August 1st.

Critical Forge’s game sees players accumulating their forces and doing battle against the enemy across both indoor and outdoor battle maps with multiple vertical layers to contend with that alter the way an encounter will unfold.

For instance, on the icy hills of the north, your mages can lob magical attacks at foes down below, creating consternation and confusion in the process. However, in an enclosed space like the mead hall located in the heart of an enemy’s stronghold, your mages may be at a disadvantaged where they’ll have furnishings blocking their pathway and walls encircling their every move.

As pointed out in the features overview trailer, players will be able to use freeform character building to construct the sort of units and army that they want to take into battle using a classless system.

There are nine different weapon categories, each with their own abilities and attack patterns.

You can also alter these abilities and weapon assignments for the characters, so if you don’t like a particular setup you can always change it.

The same applies for the game’s magic system as well, which also allows you to utilize spellcrafting that relies on using magic stones and their expel states.

The magic system is themed around three magic archetypes: thermal, spirit, and arcane.

You can modify both their drain and expel states using eight different modifiers, in addition to adding or subtracting from 12 different effect modifiers, and 12 additional global modifiers. In total, this gives you close to 7,000 different spell combinations that you can come up with.

Keep in mind that while it might be easy to build attachments to your characters as you finely craft their characteristics and abilities, it can also all end at the blink of an eye. Much like The Banner Saga, which featured perma-death for the characters, the same applies to Forged of Blood.

Whoever you lose on the battlefield stays dead.

This means you’ll have to pick and choose who you bring into each battle and tactically utilize them for each fight based on their skillsets and finely tuned abilities as you fight to conquer Attiras.

You can currently wishlist Forged of Blood right now or learn more by visiting the Steam store page.