As The Creator you see farther. Vitality comes from diversity, growth requires adversity. So much is clear to the resident deities at Arcen Games, which have seen fit to continue pursuing advancement and new ways too with Skyward Collapse's Nihon no Mura expansion.
Due libation has resulted in the following being prophesized:
The floating continent of Luminith is now home to more than just the Norse and Greeks: the Japanese enter the fray as a playable faction. The Japanese of Luminith have a very strong military and a very strange pantheon of gods: their gods are much more active and aggressive than their Greek and Norse counterparts, and each god has three unique creatures rather than three god tokens. Learning to play this new style of faction effectively is a fun new challenge, because it changes the flow of everything: you can't drop the usual god tokens for points, instead having to rely on lots of creature summons. Given how powerful this then makes the Japanese military, the Norse and Greek god tokens have to be used in new and creative ways to drive back this threat.
Hamlets are the other major addition in Nihon no Mura. These non-combative, non-factional villages can be built in the remains of the fallen towns of either faction. Ignore the hamlets and they will be taken over by slums. Tend to them and you can build up a mix of nobles and peasantry that will generate a new Culture resource for you. Culture allows you to activate some powerful new abilities, such as enlarging the radius of your factional towns. Amass enough Culture and Sunstone and you can even win the game via a new method: constructing the incredible Luminith Tower.
The features distilled:
• Unique new Japanese faction with a completely new way of handling their gods.
• Hamlets allow for non-factional building construction that enable several powerful new abilities.
• New "Hamlet Idyll" game mode that lets you play with hamlets without the military side of the game.
• New alternate win condition! Construct the Luminith Tower via resources earned in your hamlets.
• Several new map types, woes, land tile types, and a useful new Military Outpost building for all factions.
• More music!
Even though not all features are yet implemented, this expansion is in beta and can presently already be pre-ordered.
The base game has reached 1.5 Beta and predictions point to a full v2.0 release coinciding with the expansion's release by the end of this month.
