It deserves it’s own thread, so here it is.
So when a sports management sim meets a roguelike he likes very very much they get married and that’s where baby games like Epic Manager come from.
Briefly, you recruit adventurers out of 24(?) different classes, assemble them into parties, and send them out to scour a procedurally-generated hex -based map in search of fame and fortune. Mostly fame, since that’s the overall goal - to compete in a series of leagues against other agencies until yours is the bestest in the Westest.
The management part really shines, and is quite deep, with each recruitable adventurer a mix of stats, special abilities, and traits, both positive and negative. Adventurers level up, or course, and so does your Agency, allowing it to field more parties, hire trainers, engage in a little sabotage of other agencies, and purchase improvements along a sort of tech tree.
The weakest aspect of the game is the combat, which is a shame, because there’s a lot of it. Every quest I’ve taken on so far has ended with it, but I don’t know if the final release will have alternative ways to complete them. There are also random encounters which often lead to combat (but not always). The combat isn’t terrible, per se, but until you have stronger adventurers with better skills and equipment it’s kind of lackluster.
The developer is calling it an Alpha, but it really plays more like a late Beta. It appears to be feature-complete, and I haven’t run into any obvious bugs. All it needs at this point is a bit more polishing, and re-balancing, particularly of the early game, which can be brutally difficult.