An unique take on Dante's Inferno

🪦 Inferno is the newest game from Red Mojo Games, coming to Gamefound soon. After their last game Tindaya, I was expecting the next game to be pretty unique too - which turned out to be true regarding both its setting and gameplay. 👍 It’s themed around Dante’s Inferno from the Divine Comedy and the nine circles of hell. You play as influential families in 14th century Florence, trying to grow your infamy through different means, while also guiding sinners to their respective circles in hell. I’d say it qualifies as unique! 😮

I love games with a special take on action selection, and here you get it in spades. 🤩 Each turn you have to move a soul in hell, trying to get it to its matching colored circle; ☝️the symbol it lands on will then dictate what part of the city you can do your action in. This constantly restricts your choices and makes you plan for future turns. It’s a compelling puzzle. Souls can only move a single space, but can jump over occupied spaces, so as circles fill up with souls, new souls can reach lower circles faster. All of this is then further spruced up by 2 mythological creatures 👹 that you choose at setup out of 6, each with their own mechanics to influence hell.

Inferno is cleverly structured around this theme: there are 8️⃣ colors of circles in hell, with 8️⃣ corresponding sin tracks you will go up on. There are souls (meeples) of these 8️⃣ colors and the 8️⃣ action locations of the city share the same colors as well. These are all linked together mechanically.

As you play you will either do actions in town or accuse a sinner. Accusing will bring new souls to hell and will also move the Dante figure on its track, bringing you closer to the end of the game. As Dante lands on certain spaces, you will do majority scoring for the corresponding Sin track, so competition for those will be fierce. One of your main focuses is to advance on those and fill the matching circles with souls.

There is a lot to unpack in this game, so we’ll definitely do a follow up as the campaign approaches. For now I hope this gave you a little taste of Inferno.😉