Thea: The Awakening, Lada 1

I have been playing Thea: The Awakening. It is a game where the player guides a village to thrive under post-apocalyptic circumstances, fantasy-style, under the guidance of a god or goddess. Expeditions are sent out from the village to explore the land and gather resources to construct buildings, craft equipment and cook food.

Replaying the game over and over will improve the bonuses given by individual gods or goddesses. I wonder how soon it will be before, after completing each game, I get bored of restarting over and over from almost scratch. That was the reason I stopped playing Crusaders of the Lost Idols - I got bored of doing the same thing each time I restarted. On the other hand, Thea: The Awakening is a much more complicated game and restarts may have different challenges, especially with a god or goddess with more bonuses unlocked.

Of note is the fact that fights and challenges in the game take the form of a card game. Each card represents a character and is played either to directly confront the opposition or to provide a supportive effect.

At the moment, the game is an Early Access game with annoying bugs (nothing game-breaking, though) and spelling mistakes. The screenshots and the story below were written based on build 0.1003.0 of the game. There is a newer build at the time of writing.

The screenshots below were taken from my second game. That time, I had decided to go with Lada, which I had unlocked after the first game, along with the Gameplay Options of Gatherers-Small-Normal. Lada is the Goddess of Hope, Beauty, Love and Joy. She is the youngest goddess, born at the start of the Darkness. I would call her the Teenage Goddess, but considering that she is a century old, the title is not so appropriate.

The bonuses of Lada.

The screenshot above was taken after I had completed this game with Lada. When I first started this game, I had only the first bonus from Lada, which gave four extra children at the start. Four children may not seem like much. However, when added to the two children I would normally start with, they met the 6-children requirement for an event called The Cropping. All I had to do was to keep them alive until the event showed up.

Oh look, a spelling mistake.

The Cropping randomly gives a new villager, potentially a very good one, at the maximum cost of six children. I got a Vily.

Scored a Vily.

The Vily is good in combat and excels in Stealth. But her true value is that she is a magical creature with the Magic attribute. Magic is rare in the game and is a requirement to unlock additional options when dealing with events. During encounters with wandering magical creatures, Magic allows the possibility to magically nuke the baddies and claim maximum loot.

What is not shown in the starting bonuses is that having Lada as the goddess unlocks certain options in certain events. I recruited a Dwarven Bandit from one such event thanks to her - the guy had been smitten by Lada's beauty. The Dwarven Bandit is a good fighter with Stealth, and he came with a very good weapon of endgame quality. I needed such weapons to handle dragons later.

The screenshot below had been taken a long time after I had recruited the Dwarven Bandit. While the dwarf can dish out enough damage to bring down a dragon in two hits, he does not have the defense to take a hit from a dragon.

A dwarf armed with the aptly named Dragon's Bane.

Early in the game, I was lucky and unlocked a source of Ancient Wood right next to my village. A later build of the game made finding rare resources like this close by less likely to happen, though.

Ancient Wood gathering site next to the village!

Before finding the Ancient Wood, I had unlocked a source of Dark Wood close to the village. That was good since I required Dark Wood. Buildings constructed with large amounts of Dark Wood attracts goblins.

A Watchtower built with Dark Wood attracts goblins.

The screenshot below is of one of the goblins that joined my village as a result. The goblin had leveled a bit since then.

The Goblin Skirmisher I had.

I needed strong fighters because later in the game, there would be dragons. I challenged one of them to a fight with my party. A dragon would be easy if it were not for the meat-shields that often accompany them.

The dragon is the fourth card from the left.

I was fortunate to have won that fight without injuries, considering that no one in my expedition could survive a direct attack from the dragon without protection. As shown in the screenshot below, the loot I received was disappointing since I got no Dragon Skin or Dragon Bones. I did earn a good amount of XP and research, though.

Another spelling mistake.

Fresh from victory against a tough opponent, my expedition continued their exploration and found:

Two Zmeys and another Dragon were just too much to handle!

I decided to get away before it gets dark since the baddies are a lot more aggressive at night. I had been lucky in the fight with the Dragon earlier. However, if the next fight resulted in serious injuries, my expedition would need to camp for at least a couple of turns to tend to the wounded. It would be disastrous if my party was attacked during that time.

On my way out, I checked the Divine Quest that I had initially come to this corner of the map for:

There is another spelling mistake hidden in this wall of text.

I had to convince the goddess Lada that I was worthy for the quest.

Maya attacked the goddess with words!

The challenge had been easy. Also, it had been a Social Challenge and thus, there was no risk of real injury (unless scripted by the event). I was given some loot and sent onto the last step of the quest.

Loot received from the goddess Lada.

I had The Cropping event again. Perhaps this event happens at regular intervals. It is something to observe in the future. Anyway, I chose the spirit-walking option again to see who else I would recruit. I received a Witch:

One of the children became a Witch.

A Witch is still classed as a Craftman but with attributes more suited for intellectual challenges, and perhaps magic, rather than crafting. I did not try her abilities much since I was getting more and more villagers to manage. I wonder if it is because I am better at playing this game the second time around, or it is a hidden bonus of the goddess Lada to attract people.

More and more goblins joined my village too, attracted by the Dark Wood I used to construct my buildings. I had few human Warriors, so I subcontracted defense to goblins.

I attracted a Goblin Boss that time.

The game was getting a little difficult to handle with around thirty villagers to manage. Perhaps if I spent more time, I could sort everything out and craft lots of equipment for everyone. However, my main expedition was moving slowly through snowy terrain and was running out of food variety. The expedition still had basic food but without variety, the expedition members would lose the bonuses that a variety of food would give.

Since the endgame boss happened to be within the area, I decided to go straight for the ending:

What a polite boss!

The boss was very polite, explaining the situation and the possible results clearly. He was even nice enough to offer the expedition a chance to come back later. I had been through this in a previous game so I knew what would happen. Thus, I started a debate.

After a fight won by words, and a ritual, look who finally showed up:

Someone was very late to the party!

Immediately after the event, I was presented with the summary of my progress, along with an option to either continue or end the game.

The score summary screen.

The score summary screen had a couple of missing descriptions. Either they had not been added, or someone added extra quotation marks in the code.

The requirement for the next level was a whopping 447 points! Considering that the major point-giving categories had already been scored, it would take a lot of work to earn those points. Thus, I decided to end the game. I had then unlocked the first four bonuses of Lada as shown in the screenshot at the top of this article. The bonuses given by Lada give more starting assets, which should be used to gather more long-term advantages as soon as possible. Lada will be good for a speed run, especially in higher difficulties (available from build 0.1007.0 and later) where difficulty increases as more turns pass.

I had played this game over three days. After the game, I discovered that I had unlocked Zorya.

My build of Thea: The Awakening has been updated. I think I shall try Veles next and see how he will influence events in the game.

Thea: The Awakening, Contents