Re-Legion

Think you could be a prophet or guru? Ready to convert the masses? Well, dive into this cyberpunk dystopia. An RTS where you need to go out and recruit followers/soldiers in the hope of saving a world that’s all but lost. It’s up to you to decide whether your sect will be pacifist, or on the path to holy war. The faith of your followers is your most powerful weapon.

"Welcome, new adept of the religion of Elion, the saviour…"
And so the tone is set and almost from the outset you’re the guru leading a new sect in a visually impressive cyberpunk world. Your aim? To bring meaning to the lives of the masses by indoctrinating them into your cult and freeing them from the oppression of the big corporations. But be warned: the life of a religious leader isn’t always a cosy one. The battle against corporate armies and rivalries with other cults will cost many lives.

Re-Legion is an RTS with a truly original concept, developed by Ice Code Games, and published by 1C Entertainment.

It gets off to a very quick start. Over the course of a short tutorial you will see your character, Elion, go from a corporate wage slave to the one true techno prophet. The next mission will have you converting the poor that wander the streets in droves, and all within a few seconds. A vaccination programme causes those born outside the corporations to lead pointless lives in which they seek only to satisfy their most basic needs. But you are there to free them from their meagre existence through cyber-spiritual enlightenment.

The story is told through cutscenes and more is revealed through conversations as the missions progress. The decidedly cyberpunk graphics are great to look at, and the urban landscape is generally very dark, with lots of neon. The game is played from a top-down point of view of the area you are exploring, and you can rotate and zoom the camera. Your objectives and resources are clearly displayed on the screen, and in the bottom right you can see your army of followers, with each category of follower represented by a unique icon.

And you are the only one giving orders.

And as the leader, you’ll be faced with many decisions to make to determine the direction in which you want your religion and followers to grow. There will be lots of difficult moral choices to make, but they’re all for the common good. Your religion takes shape as you select dogmas, which translate into upgrades for your followers. You buy these dogmas using the faith that you have earned.

To earn resources and gain more followers, you’ll need to capture buildings in the city. Your main resources are credits (money), faith, and your number of followers. You’ll need to hack into crypto-banks to earn money, and you can earn faith by capturing temples, in which you install your own worshippers. But take care: you risk losing your buildings if you don’t station enough units there to protect them.

Our tip: capture buildings like armouries that will give you access to more upgrades and specialisations for your units.

With his faithful masses, Elion is sworn to overthrow the social order, attack the world’s corporate rulers, and even wage war on rival cults to become the biggest religion ever founded. Will your religion go down in history as a turning point for humanity, or will you be just another sect that was never more than a niche cult?