SEO Title: Escaping the Abyss: Why Tactics RPG Lost In The Open is the Spiritual Successor to The Banner Saga and Wildermyth’s Desperate Journeys

The tactical RPG landscape has been profoundly shaped by games that weave together strategic, turn-based combat with emotionally gripping narratives centered on survival and impossible choices. Two titles stand out in this niche: the somber, choice-driven Viking exodus of The Banner Saga, and the emergent, character-focused fantasy adventures of Wildermyth. Now, an upcoming title, Lost In The Open, is poised to claim its place alongside these giants, offering a unique blend of roguelike urgency and brutal low-fantasy tactics that directly appeal to fans of “desperate running battles.”

Developed by Black Voyage Games, Lost In The Open casts the player not as a hero, but as a reviled figure: King Nrvesk of Ruedome, a despot who narrowly survives an assassination attempt during a diplomatic meeting. Wounded and stripped of his power, the King and a handful of loyal guards must flee across treacherous, procedurally generated lands to reach the safety of his home realm. This premise immediately sets a tone of high-stakes attrition and constant peril, a defining characteristic that echoes the desperate resource management and fatal choices of its spiritual predecessors.

The Banner Saga’s Brutal Urgency Meets FTL’s Roguelike Map

The most compelling overlap between Lost In The Open and The Banner Saga is the overwhelming sense of constant flight and pursuit. In Stoic’s masterpiece, players managed a caravan, forever chased by the mysterious Dredge, with every decision on the overland map carrying the weight of life or death. Lost In The Open captures this perfectly, substituting the caravan for a small, hunted company and the Dredge for a relentless, elite Strathaian vanguard represented by an encroaching sea of red hexagons on the map.

• Attritional Survival: Just like managing morale and supplies in The Banner Saga, here you must constantly balance resource management (gold and food) with the need to engage in dangerous combat to level up and gather scrap. Running out of food causes characters to lose health with every move, forcing difficult decisions that compromise your combat readiness. This is where the game earns its “desperate” tag.
• Permanent Loss & Consequence: Units in Lost In The Open have a chance of permanent death when KO’d, a brutal mechanic reminiscent of the definitive character deaths in The Banner Saga. Furthermore, injured units may become Marred with permanent stat distortions, demanding the consumption of scarce medical supplies—a punishing layer of permadeath that elevates every turn-based encounter.
• Narrative and Map-Driven Choice: The world traversal is heavily influenced by roguelike elements, a mechanic often compared to the urgency of FTL: Faster Than Light. Each node on the map presents a unique event—a battle, a resource opportunity, or a moral choice in a story quest. These ambiguous events force players to take risks, mirroring the narrative ambiguity and high consequences of decision-making in both The Banner Saga and the best-in-class story-rich RPGs.

Wildermyth’s Tactical Depth in a Darker Fantasy

While The Banner Saga provides the thematic core of the desperate journey, the comparisons to Wildermyth lie in the tactical combat and the importance of a custom-built, evolving squad of warriors.

• Grid-Based, Initiative-Driven Combat: The battles in Lost In The Open are turn-based and take place on an 8-directional grid, putting it firmly in the tactical RPG genre. Characters act based on an initiative bar, a familiar system for fans of deep tactical engagement. The combat is designed to be punishingly tactical: positioning is paramount, with flanking and rear attacks inflicting bonus damage.
• Armor and Health Mechanics: The combat features a degradeable armor layer that must be stripped away before health damage can be inflicted. This mechanic adds a layer of strategic depth, forcing players to choose between high-damage health attacks or tactical armor-breaking abilities—a system that feels reminiscent of the armor/health dynamics of The Banner Saga but streamlined for the faster-paced, roguelite combat loop.
• Class Specialization and Customization: Players must manage a diverse roster of recruits—from crossbowmen to tanky shieldbros and “screamy berserkers.” The ability to train and equip them with unique trinkets and attachments, forging them into specialists or jacks-of-all-trades, taps into the deep character progression found in games like Wildermyth and Battle Brothers. Players will be constantly adapting their tactics and party composition based on the random recruits they acquire throughout a run.

Early Access and a Focus on High-Value Gameplay

Set for an imminent Early Access launch on September 26th, Lost In The Open is a title that should be on the radar of every serious indie game enthusiast and fan of low-fantasy, high-consequence strategy. The debut will feature the first of three acts, five factions, a roster of twenty unit types, three zones, and hundreds of unique events. The developers have explicitly stated their commitment to using community feedback to implement major improvements, including a new Utility-Based AI system and the ‘Repentance Path’ system, which speaks to the narrative focus on King Nrvesk’s dark past.

In a gaming market increasingly saturated with complex and lengthy RPG experiences, Lost In The Open offers a tight, brutal, and highly replayable tactical adventure. If the emotional weight of a dwindling caravan in The Banner Saga and the emergent tactical storytelling of Wildermyth appealed to your strategic sensibilities, then preparing for the desperate running battles and high-risk decisions of Lost In The Open is your next logical step in the fight for survival.

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