“Thauma” is the Ancient Greek word for a supernatural event, whereas “thaumaturge” is the Ancient Greek word for one who preforms supernatural events. I didn’t know this despite learning Ancient Greek words back in university, and now I’m questioning the entire point of my education. Anyway, The Thaumaturge was previously known as Project Vitriol, so you may have heard of it before this announcement. The Thaumaturge is a story-driven RPG that touches upon the theme of inner demons.
It’s 1905 and Warsaw is a city of conspicuous contrasts under the yoke of imperial Russian tsardom. On one hand, there is poverty and hooliganism; on the other, there’s high society wealth and political plotting. There are groups with diverse beliefs, always in conflict with one another. One man’s chance can mean another man’s demise.
Salutors exist in the supernatural cracks between the real world and the shadows. Thaumaturges have immense power, and only they can see a Salutor and use their unique abilities. They can also pry deep into people’s psyche to find a person’s honest intentions, surreptitious desires, shameful secrets, distortions, exaggerations, and imperfections. Salutors will faithfully follow their Thaumaturge masters, manipulating humans and preying on their secrets, bending their will while changing the world around them. The combat is turn-based, with Salutors being a powerful force, useful during dangerous encounters in various districts.
It may be worth mentioning that there’s a bit of a twist at the end of the trailer: note the URL changes from thaumaturgethegame.watch to thaumaturgethegame.com.
“The Thaumaturge revolves around the idea of demons both on physical, and metaphorical layers. After all, it’s a game infused with 11 bit studios’ philosophy of meaningful entertainment. Its theme is evoked in different areas of the game with gameplay mechanics or narrative aspects being only a part of those,” says Fool’s Theory Design Director, Karolina Kuzia-Rokosz, in a press release. 11 bit studios agrees with this, stating in the same release: “Fool’s Theory has proven to be a great studio to materialize our desire to add a meaningful RPG to our portfolio. And with a hefty team of around 60 people and an appropriately scaled budget, The Thaumaturge is our biggest publishing project to date, which resembles the scope of the first Frostpunk.”
Developed by Fool’s Theory and published by 11 bit studios, The Thaumaturge will be released for PC via Steam/Epic/GOG. I’d expect to see it on consoles as well.
