Sang-Froid. Sang-? San-? I cannot say Sang-Froid, but also I have never been able to stop talking about it. Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves is as close as I’ve come to a dream game, a game made purely for me. It’s the 19th century and you’re up in Canada in the wilds of winter. Every day you earn money and build your defences and lay your traps and plan your strategies. Every night, your planning collides with reality as werewolves descend and try to destroy you.
Sang-Froid was tower defense, but it was tower defense in the same way that a DeLorean is a means of getting to the supermarket. It was tower defense reimagined in such a weird, defiant, personal way. It was dark and folksy and intriguing. Its enemies felt canny and cruel and genuinely non-human. It was so cold to play, so overwhelming and exhausting. Man, it was so exhausting! A game about never having enough time, enough money, enough energy left in the legs and arms. Reader, I loved it.
Sang-Froid was the work of Artifice Studios, who went on to make Conflicks, another unique and almost indescribable strategy game, this one about space armadas and eggs. Now Vincent Blanchard, one of the small team at Artifice, has gone his own way. He’s created Autoexec, a new outfit, and he’s back with Wicca. And suddenly we’re going to need that DeLorean.
God, I have watched the Wicca trailer so many times by this point, delighted confusion giving way to something that feels like the dawning of understanding, the instance of the fingerpost. But then delighted confusion is back. Wheels within wheels. A glimmer that I might just get what’s going on. And then?