New dark fantasy tactical RPG Prelude Dark Pain is scratching my Mewgenics itch in all the right ways

As enemy forces close in, I send my young daughter scurrying through an escape tunnel into the woods, taking up arms alongside her brother to meet the imposing commander that's arrived at my door. Prelude: Dark Pain doesn't pull its punches, even in the opening battle, but fortunately old companions spot the blaze from distance and rush to our aid. Within moments, we're fleeing atop an armored caravan hauled by giant, horned beasts, battling our would-be captors on the roof. I take the opportunity to employ knockback skills to great effect, sending them crashing down to the dirt track below as we speed away. Respite, if but for a moment.

Prelude: Dark Pain tells a dark fantasy tale wrapped around the kind of tactical turn-based RPG combat that enraptured me in Into The Breach and Mewgenics. It's rich with positional contemplations and status-driven combos, rewarding you for clever playmaking amid battles that hang on a knife edge. As former warrior turned blacksmith Soren, my world has been turned upside down by the capture of my wife, accused of destructive acts of witchcraft by the Order of the Ashen Crusade. Revolution stirs across Statera, and it's time for me to light the spark.

Moment to moment, the action of Prelude: Dark Pain takes place on an overworld map akin to classic RPGs, with you wandering across the land and interacting with settlements, NPCs, and enemy patrols. Get too close to one of these, or encounter trouble while visiting a town, and you'll be pulled into a battle on a grid-based map. You can bring a squad of four into action, and there's already a pretty wide potential in how you line these up based on the ways you choose to level and equip your characters.

Each turn you can perform movement, a basic attack, and as many skills as you have spare action points to use. Within just a few battles, I've established the fundamentals of my playstyle. High-health bruiser Tammais draws aggro, while Hunter Maya uses her owl companion to poke at as many enemies as possible, blinding them to limit their accuracy while exposing them to take more damage. If there's a group close together, she can use a spread of arrows to catch everyone in a wide cone.

Soren acts almost like a rogue, sliding behind foes to inflict bleed debuffs with damaging flank attacks. Hitting enemies from the side or back deals greater damage, as does making use of high ground, and Soren's other attacks get even stronger when used on a bleeding target. Finally, his son Tizon drops mechanical turrets that target any nearby enemies who move past them, tosses bear traps to limit mobility, and pushes targets out of position with the heavy knockback on his rifle shots.

Specific story encounters give an early glimpse of some of the other members that can join on your adventure, and they each bring even more distinctive mechanics to play with. Gunslinger Gala can place blood crystal barrels that she can detonate without harming herself, while gold-masked support Sade uses her regular attack to drop a giant cross onto the battlefield that can then be amplified with her other abilities to control entire zones.

There's a little clunkiness with the menus for now, but we're still in the pre-early access stages, and I was able to do everything I wanted. Overworld encounters quickly became pretty straightforward as I leveled up and started investing talent tree points into synergies that strengthened my existing strategies.

Major fights regularly forced me to take two or three attempts, however, learning what the biggest and scariest enemies were capable of and figuring out how to minimize their ability to harm me. In some cases, you'll even have the chance to choose the fate of key foes after stopping them, although I've yet to see how this pays off in the long term.

The visual aesthetic is certainly a winner, with bold colors and enemy designs that range from warriors in bulky fantasy armor to surreal, eldritch amalgamations. It's most immediately reminiscent of Darkest Dungeon, yet Quickfire Games has carved out a distinct enough look for Prelude: Dark Pain to stand apart as its own thing. I've already found myself plotting out different character builds, and while you can reset talent points freely at any time, I think I'll just be patient and hold on until release to start fresh.

Prelude: Dark Pain is set to launch via Steam Early Access in the third quarter of 2026. If you're eager to jump in earlier, you can request access to the playtest. It's been almost exactly one year since Quickfire's Kickstarter smashed its original goals, and I'm now eagerly looking forward to playing the full release.

At launch, Quickfire Games intends to offer roughly 15 hours of gameplay, including the first act of the story and nine heroes with a combined 63 skills between them. By the time it reaches 1.0, it will feature all acts of Soren's tale, more than 20 heroes across eight class types, 20 factions, 70 enemy types (including bosses), world missions, raids, and a full crafting system. The developer adds that it intends to "gradually raise the price" as new features arrive.