I played my last game of Solium Infernum last year, and have played it a lot async since it was released. Still blows my mind that it was forged in the fires of Adobe Director because I used to use Director at uni for animations and the odd interactive piece. Making a game like this in… that.
Anyway, yeah, Solium Infernum does have a rough interface which requires a lot of clicking to access different panes of (critical) information. If you play it async then that keeps a lid on it somewhat because once you’ve done you’re turn, you’re done. In single-player I can imagine using the UI turn after turn being death by attrition.
It’s funny you mention Dominions, Tom, because I picked 4 up a few years ago and played an async game with some folks here thinking ‘Well, if I can handle Solium Infernum, I’m sure I can handle this’. Oh lordy, no. Say what you like about the SI interface, the Dominions UI felt so much more fiddly, compounded by all the army and unit micro-management. I sunk 40 hours into that one async game(!) that was eventually declared over after the first fight more or less decided the game! (We’ve just finished an Age of Wonders 3 async game and that ended similarly (the UI in that is lovely though)). In all my games of Solium Infernum they all played out fully because there’s enough concealed information and enough backstabbing and dramatic power shifts that it’s difficult to call until it’s over. I love that.
One of my favourite things about Solium Infernum though is the art and the writing. It’s all so evocative. The location icons and playing pieces, the portraits, the manuscripts, the barren ashen grey hexes, the flavour text and titles.
