Fans of Tactics Ogre: Reborn and Disco Elysium who want their tactical decisions to carry genuine political weight. They love deep faction systems, rich flavor text, and scenarios where following the rules might kill you — but breaking them might be worse. They've bounced off games that reset to neutral after every fight.
Thornwall is a rain-soaked free city surviving on contract law and commerce. Three powerful guilds control its six districts. You are the new guildmaster of the smallest one — and the previous guildmaster didn’t retire. Late-medieval noir: cobblestone canals, iron lanterns, rival banners, a legal compact older than the ruling council.
Position units on a grid. Manage a two-slot action economy. Before confirming any attack, the UI flags active contract clauses it would breach. Execute — or call your Advocate to renegotiate mid-battle first.
Accept a contract, read its clauses, deploy across 3–5 encounters. File your post-mission report. The district control map shifts based on how the city witnessed your methods. Choose next week’s jobs from a board rival guilds have already picked over.
- Contract Clause System — every mission has legally binding restrictions on how you can fight (lethal force, property damage, witness contact, custody, time limits); breaching costs reputation, renegotiating costs coin and a turn.
- Advocate Renegotiation — a specialist unit can pause mid-battle to attempt a real-time contract rewrite; success changes the active clause, partial success adjusts it with a cost, hostile outcome turns the client into an active map obstacle.
- Living City Overworld — six districts each track faction affinity; three rival guilds operate simultaneously, claiming contracts and territory every week; the city’s power map evolves based on collective guild actions throughout the campaign.
- Unit Dossiers & Morale — no permadeath, but units can quit, defect to rivals, or testify against you at a Guild Tribunal if pushed past their breaking point; roster management carries real stakes without irreversible loss.
- Investigative Campaign Spine — clue fragments surface through every contract, building toward the truth of how your predecessor died and who actually controls Thornwall’s shadow economy.
- Guild Ledger — a lean economy tracks wages, upgrade costs, and breach fines; unpaid wages trigger mid-battle morale penalties, making financial management a tactical layer rather than an afterthought.
- The Contract Clause System makes every fight a legal puzzle as much as a tactical one — constraints that generate interesting problems, not just added difficulty.
- A living overworld with three rival guild AIs means no battle resets to neutral; reputation compounds week over week into genuine political consequences.
- A whodunit investigation woven through every Season rewards attentive players with narrative texture most tactical RPGs skip entirely.
- Units can quit, defect, or testify against you — morale with teeth, without permadeath’s irreversibility.
- Mid-battle Advocate renegotiation is a mechanic no current tactical RPG offers: you can change the rules of the fight while the fight is happening.
Week 1 establishes core grid combat. Weeks 2–3 integrate the clause system and Advocate renegotiation mechanic. Week 4 wires up the district sovereignty map. Week 5 links the investigation thread and Guild Ledger. Week 6 delivers a full 3-mission contract arc for external playtesting — clear milestone, clear signal on whether the clause system earns its complexity.