I played my first game as Mammon with three friends & two AI. I was dead last for half the game, bumbling around unsure of how to maneuver the disparate parts into a longer strategy until I finally got a prestige engine churning with max rank Charisma and rank 4 Prophecy. Methodically, I maneuvered the Gilded of Mammon to bully Beelzebub and earn small prestige victories, as I continuously levied demands against the stupid AI -- as we all did -- and I prepared my ritual table.

Belial and Andromalius were making political maneuvers all game; so I popped a midgame Elocution earning me 6-30 prestige a round as my rival archfiends desperately tried to crush each other, then I popped Burnt Offerings, the max level Charisma ritual, to milk my subjects for 9-11 prestige every turn. Over the following half of the game I swung from last place with an overwhelming prestige in the 300s as Mammon's economy engine finally earned me massive notoriety in hell.

The Archangel himself then descended from heaven up high and systemically erased all of my legions, including my Gilded of Mammon, who had made themselves tremendously powerful over a long series of small victories. Any attempts of war neutered, I sat on my economy and farmed prestige.

Belial, previously vying as the conclave favorite, realized favor was slipping from him and plotted against the crown. He summoned massive super legions and swarmed Pandemonium, Hell's capitol, eliminating all prestige victories and excommunication himself, but if he retained control of Pandemonium for 5 turns, he'd win the game.

At the same time, in a bizarre stroke of fate, the stupid AIs triggered events sealing the gates of hell and preventing us from collecting tribute, stifling our economy, and soon followed by another event which closed our ritual tables; Belial weaponized this with his max rank deceit to loot our stores while tribute was shut down, stifling his opponents' economies even further to maintain the upkeep on his massive infernal hordes, and took advantage of the disabled rituals to make himself virtually untouchable.

I anchored down and maxed out my Prophecy so I could wait for the moment to unseat Belial the Usurper and waited for my quaking opponents to band together and slay him. Andromolius recruited a moving Fortress and forged a dimensional cube to warp the Fortress right next door to Belial's stronghold one turn before his Usurper victory, and, in the penultimate turn, I used Demonic Interference -- the max rank prophecy ritual -- to exile his artifacts, terminate his rituals, and destroy his ritual table. With his ritual table destroyed, he had no means to protect himself from Astaroth, who levied powerful Destruction rituals at Belial's stronghold, nor Andromolius, who had a fortress ready to blow him into oblivion.

In his final breath, Belial teleported his massive hellish beasts across hell, destroying Andromalius' and Astaroth's strongholds in the very same turn his stronghold was conquered; all three of them were crushed in one pivotal turn, leaving me the only surviving Archfiend -- excluding the idiot AIs.

Belial weighed destroying me by conquering my stronghold the turn after usurping Pandemonium, but instead decided to warp his legions to protect his bases, leaving him too far away to get to me in that one turn my other rivals were systemically murdered. Three turns before his impending victory, I activated an event restricting all legion movements to 1 canton per turn, creating the conditions where Belial now felt unstoppable and teleported his beasts within striking distance of Andromalius and Astaroth, then yet unaware Andromalius had that dimensional cube.

With Belial, Andromalius, and Astaroth all ended in one fell swoop, my Gilded of Mammon returned reborn. I, the infernal Mammom, swat aside the meaningless Murmur and Beelzebub -- the idiots -- and was legally elected by the Conclave the rightful ruler of hell, standing atop the corpses of my opponents and a veritable horde of wealth.

With countless moving parts and a few strokes of luck wherein if one thing had happened a turn sooner or later it might have been a dramatically different conclusion, it was maybe the most satisfied I ever felt winning a multiplayer game.

all 3 of my opponents eliminating themselves in one turn was godly. 10/10 experience

Spooktober 2023, Entry #2

The retro RPG Maker graphics, stylized art direction, the surreal yet playful aesthetic, the cerebral jumpscares: this made for a genuinely frightening experience. And that was all before the true ending.

I got the normal ending, had my fun, rated it a 3/5, and nearly sat this down without batting an eye, completely oblivious to what I was missing. The true ending recontextualizes the entire game so dramatically it had might as well not exist without it. It's a fantastic example of lateral storytelling and how to make a tragedy deeply personal. Fuck all that scary monsters, blood-and-gore, watching-people-die Michael Myers nonsense; J-horror really does hit different.

And it's wrapped up neatly in a 3-hour package. In a quagmire of 70-100 hour JRPG epics, I desperately need these single-sitting pick-me-ups, even as they drown me in their despair. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.