This could have been SO MUCH MORE

What happens when you blend inspired art direction, a fun narrative steeped in the pulp literary tradition of the Western canon, turn-based tactical strategy, and terribly unbalanced gameplay?

You get this game.

Man, I wanted this to be so much better than it was.

Set in an alternate version of the 1930s, the player must assemble a team of genre-appropriate antiheroes to stop an ancient cult named the Banished Court, which aims to achieve world domination.

Like XCOM: Enemy Unknown, you deploy a team of characters onto a map to achieve an objective. You take turns moving your characters or having them complete actions. Each character has different attacks, strengths, and weaknesses, and it is up to you to use them to your advantage while keeping them alive.

Your enemies come in three different flavors. One faction is inspired by Lovecraftian monsters and eldritch horrors. Another consists of flame-themed mummies and fascist henchmen following a nationalistic strongman. My favorite is a corporate megalomaniac who wants to enslave the afterlife. Each faction brings fun henchmen into the game and has its own campy cutscenes.

The biggest problem with The Lamplighters League is the difficulty curve. Most games give you new abilities or force you to develop skills before introducing a new challenge, and in turn you are rewarded with even more skills, abilities, and challenges. Eventually, you are forced to use everything you have learned to overcome a final boss or obstacle. The best games keep the experience just hard enough — just outside your comfort zone — so that your new skills and abilities are constantly being tested. The Lamplighters League never quite finds that balance.

I played two or three campaigns on different difficulty levels, and sooner or later I would hit a mission that felt impossible to beat, mostly because I was simply overwhelmed by the number of enemies. The AI is sophisticated enough to take advantage of both its numbers and the environment. After hours of trial and error, I realized I was stuck. No clever tactic or piece of equipment was going to help me defend a map where I was outnumbered 20-to-1.

I will say that the art design is nothing short of inspired, and the score is good enough to enjoy even if I never return to the game.

The Lamplighters League is such a disappointment. It could have been the Indiana Jones-inspired, turn-based tactical game I never knew I wanted. What I got instead was a frustrating exercise in unbalanced gameplay.