It’s an easy thing to draw comparisons between one game and another when they share mechanical underpinnings, but I often prefer to dwell on those parallels that aren’t immediately clear. Take, for example, Adam DeYoung’s Emerge, the recent release from Pandasaurus that, for all intents and purposes, is another generic points-chaser. It’s a dice game at heart, and feels bland for precisely the same reason it feels rewarding in the moment, thanks to a core gameplay loop in which nearly every action awards roughly one point. It doesn’t immediately stand out from the pack.

But while playing Emerge, the strangest comparison kept springing to mind. That title was Jon Sudbury’s Ortus Regni.

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