The best successor to Heroes of Might and Magic has a release date

Songs of Conquest is graduating from Early Access

Marco Wutz | Apr 23, 2024

Lavapotion / Coffee Stain

A fantastic turn-based strategy game is graduating from Early Access on May 20, 2024, in the form of Songs of Conquest. Confirmed by developer Lavapotion and publisher Coffee Stain – which is set to go independent in the wake of Embracer Group’s recently announced split – on Steam, this day will see the title get its substantial 1.0 update.

How substantial, you ask? Well, Songs of Conquest’s full launch will bring a new single-player campaign to the game, which focuses on the merchant republic of Barya. Largely inspired by mercantile city-states from around the Mediterranean, this faction relies on mercenary units to wage war and has access to advanced gunpower troops.

Barya is also one of the factions players can choose in the sandbox campaigns against the AI or human opponents (or in co-op mode against the AI) alongside the knightly faction of Arelon, the tribal swamp-dwellers of Rana, and the creepy necromancers of Loth.

A recent update to the Early Access title increased the number of available maps to almost 50, which doesn’t even count community-made battlefields. Full release is coming a little later than the developers initially expected, but that’s fine – as they said themselves: “Sharing this news with you guys feels long overdue, but we’ve always had high ambitions for the game, and we didn’t want to release 1.0 until we felt the game was in really good shape! But finally, that time has come!”

Naturally, the journey won’t end then and there – post-launch support plans are already being drawn up.

Songs of Conquest is a brilliant game in the vein of Heroes of Might and Magic or, a little further away in the family tree, Age of Wonders. You command unique armies led by mighty Wielders and explore fantastical lands full of secrets and adventure. As you expand your influence and upgrade your towns, you’ll get access to ever stronger units and magic, which you can unleash against your enemies in thrilling turn-based battles.

Songs of Conquest will be out for PC and Steam Deck on May 20, 2024.

Published Apr 23, 2024

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg