Videogame Review: ‘The Thaumaturge’

The Thaumaturge is a gritty and supernatural story by developer Fool’s Theory set in 1905 Warsaw, Poland. The game tangles up real-world events and people with mystical creatures and the practitioners who capture them, called Thaumaturges. The game is compelling and well-rounded, and has some mechanics I have never experienced before. It’s a great experience despite some repetitiveness.

The story focuses on Wiktor Szulski, who is a Thaumaturge in isolation battling literal internal demons. He can innately detect traces of emotions on items to learn secrets about people and to draw conclusions that enable him to solve crimes, or detect flaws that can help him track down Salutors.

Salutors are mysterious and elusive creatures of Slavic, Jewish, Bavarian, or Arabic origins that attach themselves to humans’ flaws and use those connections to control them. A Thaumaturge can absorb the flaw and take control of the Salutor, either for their own purposes or to dismiss it.

Wiktor has had a Salutor for a long time. When he tried to purge another one from a hapless victim he lost control of Upyr, his first connection, who was attached to Wiktor’s flaw of Pride. Wandering for years he finally found a healer in the form of Grigori Rasputin (yes THAT Rasputin) who helped him not only re-establish the connection to Upyr but control multiple Salutors, which is unheard of.

This kicks off the story of The Thaumaturge. Wiktor returns to Warsaw after his hated father has died, and is trying to restart his life. Poland is in the midst of a Russian takeover, the world is on the brink of war, and Wiktor just wants to find the one item his father left him, the legendary Black Grimoire, the source of a Thaumaturge’s control and power.

Initially the game seemed to be a Disco Elysium-style adventure game with plenty of dialogue and internal choices. But it ends up a more exploratory experience with puzzles, side quests, and plenty of combat. The combat is very well implemented, but I found it occurred a little too often; why random thugs keep challenging a magician who controls psychic demons was a mystery.

As Wiktor explores Warsaw and meets old figures from his past, the game starts rolling out plenty of side missions, goals, and new Salutors to discover. The map is fairly useless as it only shows zones, not details, so the ability to sense and see a trail to the objective is spammed nearly nonstop.

A quick button press triggers Wiktor to snap his fingers and any points of interest nearby are highlighted, and a trail to the current objective appears. If there are mundane clues like posters, books or items they are instantly visible, but traces of key items represent as a beautiful array of lights that focus when the object is found.

Because of this mechanic I literally ran around the city snapping my finger nonstop, reading and interacting with every tagged object. This often triggered a short mission or next step in the narrative, so it’s essential to the game.

There is a ton of lore, story material and neat little tidbits to discover by doing this. Every little discovery adds XP, which feeds skills, generating a satisfying loop. Exploring not only lets you meet people and gain skills and Salutors, it also lets you gather very cool collectibles like drawings of an experience you unlocked or records with songs you can listen to anytime.

There is a lot to discover in The Thaumaturge and some frankly amazing ideas and implementations that grabbed my interest very quickly. Unfortunately, because the game has a lot going on, the fast travel and navigation systems devolve parts of the game into following glowing paths and jumping back and forth often between locations to get to the next side quest point or story beat.

Thankfully the things that really shine are truly terrific. The world is amazingly represented: a turn-of-the-20th-century Poland on the brink of being overwhelmed. The characters are varied and uniformly interesting even though the dialogue is clunky at times.

The game mechanics are spread around exploration and puzzle solving through dialogue/clues and combat. The combat leverages learned skills and assistance from your Salutor. It is a turn-based affair with each character acting in sequence.

There are a great many tactics in combat, as enemies may have traits that diminish some of your skills, so swapping out Salutors to find an effective match is necessary. There are boss battles where you encounter new Salutors or attempt to control them, and these are handled as waves of enemies and special attacks from the boss.

While the combat can be deep it generally becomes a back-and-forth between issuing commands and waiting for enemies to complete their actions. Once you get the hang of combat it can become repetitive, especially as it happens somewhat often.

While I have some quibbles with the traversal system and combat I can safely say that there are very few games like The Thaumaturge, and I mean that in the nicest way. The story is bonkers, Rasputin is implemented in a very compelling way, and the world is incredibly interesting as is the era the game is set in.

Visually the game looks fantastic, with a terrific art style and really unique looks for the demonic Salutors. The Thaumaturge is also fully voice acted, which outside of the main characters is a little hit and miss. But it’s a welcome feature, as is the terrific music and audio, which are front and center.

If you’re a fan of adventure games, Eastern European culture, turn-based combat or gritty supernatural scenarios then this game will tick a lot of boxes for you. Those looking for a deep and captivating experience will also enjoy The Thaumaturge. Just be aware that the game takes a bit to get going, but once it does it’s a unique and enjoyable one.

We were given a Steam PC code for review purposes and The Thaumaturge will be available March 4 for PC via Steam, the Epic Game Store and GoG.