Come now, don't look so glum. You're going to help me save the world.
"I'm in a race against this darkness. A race to locate an ancient ruin. A tower of unspeakable power. I need the best of the best. But they're all dead. So I'll use you. Scoundrels. Thieves. Cutthroats. The best of the worst."
— Locke
The Lamplighter's League is a a mix of a realtime Stealth-Based Game with Turn-Based Combat.
Sneak, steal, and shoot your way through a world of pulp adventure in The Lamplighters League! Globetrot across a variety of exciting locales around the world and outwit your enemies in strategic turn-based combat - and, if you play your cards right, you might just save the world.
Unfortunately, the best of the best are all gone, so now it's up to the best of the worst.
Recruit a team of misfits and scoundrels with unique abilities and unforgettable personalities, and chase the Banished Court to the ends of the earth in a mix of real-time infiltration, turn-based tactical combat, and a character-driven story of adventure and intrigue.
The game provides examples of:
- Affectionate Nickname: Eddie and Ingrid develop these for each other fairly quickly, with Ingrid calling him 'Ace' and Eddie calling her 'Slugger'.
- Army of Thieves and Whores: The Lamplighter's League is in such desperate need of recruits that Locke is willing to hire criminals ranging from assassins to thieves, mob enforcers to spies and revolutionaries to vigilantes.
- By far the weirdest however, is Nocturne: a spectrophysicist who escaped from an alternate dimension.
- Bad Boss: The Banished Court sacrifices many of their minions for power.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: A number of the characters have achievements for completing missions with other specific characters. Most of the achievements depict the characters standing back-to-back.
- Cards of Power: In the tutorial mission the Lamplighters retrieve a deck of blank playing cards. They turn out to be The Undrawn Hand. A deck of cards that empower the agents as the game goes on.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Many of the Agents have these.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Banished Court uses all sorts of monsters, but House Nicastro embodies this the most worshipping the Sea God.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The monsters of each house are vulnerable and immune to different types of attacks. House Marteau's are immune to shock damage, but vulnerable to fire damage, House Strum's are immune to fire damage, yet vulnerable to poison damage and House Nicastro's are immune to poison damage and vulnerable to shock damage.
- Evil Makes You Monstrous: A priest for the Sea God will defect from House Nicastro realizing the cost.
- Evil Overlord: Strum's goal is to become The Emperor of the world.
- Faux Affably Evil: Marteau will call the Lamplighters after hacking into their radios during his heist and treat it like a tour of his factory. He throws a tantrum when the Lamplighters actually manage to defeat the last of his guards and successfully steal an ingot of his precious Persephonite.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Despite the majority of the Agents joining the Lamplighters League due to a significant payday, they work together, learn about each others lives, offer to team up on other jobs after defeating the Banished Court, and eventually will argue over who should enter the Bright Storm rather than let each other die.
- Gas Mask Mooks: The Banished Court soldiers are fond of this.
- Heroic Sacrifice: At the very end of the game, one member of the heist team must enter the Bright Storm to make the Ascendant Scion vulnerable again.
- Hidden Depths: Despite many of the Agents claiming they're only involved for the money, each of them is willing to die for the mission by the end of the game.
- Human Sacrifice: The source of different Scions' powers come at different prices.
- Interface Spoiler: Patch 1.2 added The Archives to collect all the scraps of lore, newspaper articles, enemy descriptions, and tutorials encountered by the player for later reference. It also lists all the status conditions, hazards, and environmental effects before they're encountered, which gives away a good two-thirds of The Undrawn Hand cards and namedrops several characters and enemies before the player would normally become aware of them.
- MacGuffin Location: The Tower at the End of the World (A.K.A the World Tree, the Tower of Babel, the Axis Mundi, etc.,) a mystical location that once served as a travel nexus before it became displaced in another dimension. At the top of the Tower is the Bright Storm, a powerful arcane force that can shape the world to the Scions' whims if they get the opportunity to harness it.
- Mad Scientist: Marteau is an American Industrialist and inventor. Lord Strum represents this as well.
- Multinational Team
- Only in It for the Money: Most Agents start out this way. Although when they learn the risks involved they are prepared to give their all to save the world.
- Professional Killer: Lamplighter agents include a Sanguine Club assassin, a hitman, and a magically trained assassin.
- Pulp Magazine: The game's aesthetic.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The game starts with a gentleman thief, a blonde knockout, and a World War 1 veteran turned bank robber. Additional agents include a pacifist nun who took up arms, a magical knife wielding assassin, an engineer blowing up factories to fight a Corporate Conspiracy, a sniper who would kill Lamplighters if they made her rate, a bodyguard and hitman who doesn't ask questions, and a Scholar who betrayed the Banished Court after they stiffed them on their rate.
- Shield Bash: Judith's knockdown ability.
- The End of the World as We Know It: What will happen if any of the Houses complete their doomsday clock and the Lamplighters League fail to stop them in a desperate last stand. Nicastro summons her Sea God and renders the world a watery graveyard, Strum turns the entire world into a neverending warzone with himself as emperor, and Marteau industrialises the entire planet and enslaves all of humanity to work in his factories. And after his workers die? He sets their souls to work.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Downplayed, but Ana gives an absolutely blistering one to Locke after he expresses that she could have been a member of the Lamplighters League of yore rather than the current agents who he looks down upon as "selfish, loutish, or low of character".Ana: Mr. Locke, every person here has risked their life to save an uncaring world from a horrible fate, and they have done it knowing they wouldn't have been let in the servant's door of the old Lamplighters League!
