Yakshini Lokam fuses action-packed tactical gameplay with classic Indian board games dating as far back as the 2nd Century CE. Play as a family of four from Hyderabad, India who were spirited away to a magical world— just as they were sitting down to family game night!
The game’s Sanskrit title roughly translates into English as “Fairy Realm”.
Controls
Gameplay
The game-world consists of a series of battle arenas linked together by an overworld. In the overworld, the player controls the whole family at once. They move in single file as they explore exotic biomes and meet various NPC challengers.
When the family encounters a challenger, they are transported to a gridded battle arena, and gameplay becomes turn-based. This means the player can only control one character at a time, and must maneuver them against a squad of computer-controlled opponents until they attain victory or failure.
Just like the ancient game of Chess, victory is achieved by capturing every member of the opposing squad, while failure occurs if the opponents manage to capture all four members of the family.
Action Points
Each character’s Turn is limited by a finite number of Action Points (AP), which can be spent by the player in order to move, or to activate items. Once all of a character’s AP has been expended, that character’s Turn is over.
Once all characters (including opponents) have taken their Turn, play enters the next Round and proceeds from top of the turn order. Most battles must be won within a prescribed number of Rounds, forcing the player to strategically optimise their Turns and take calculated risks to emerge victorious.
Step and Boost
Step is the most basic form of movement. Press a direction on the D-Pad to move the character one space in that direction. Each Step costs 1 AP.
Boost is a more advanced form of movement, allowing the player to throw a magical dice item and move many spaces in a single burst. Using a Boost costs 1 AP and expends one instance of the selected item from the inventory. Whenever a player Boosts, they become charged with magical energy, allowing them to blast through destructible obstacles, and push giant boulders into opponents from a great distance.
Opponents
The magical world of Yakshini Lokam is filled with mythical creatures. Each turn, they will move towards the nearest family member and attempt to capture them by moving onto the space they occupy.
Different opponents have different abilities. Makaras, a kind of elephant-alligator hybrid, can attack from afar using a projectile blast of water. They may use this during their own turn, or else adopt an ‘overwatch’ behaviour to shoot as a reaction when a character enters their line of sight. The serpentine Nagas act more like the snakes in Snakes and Ladders (another ancient Indian game), sliding the player down their tails to a different part of the board.
The player will also encounter bosses; larger creatures with much more powerful abilities. Bosses are able to withstand multiple hits before they are defeated.
Items
In order to defeat their opponents and escape Yakshini Lokam, the family must master an arsenal of items from traditional Indian board games. These include dice variants like Dhayam barrel dice and Cowrie Shells, sliding projectile Carrom pucks, and arcing Kara Billa sticks which can be propelled over the top of obstacles.
Game Feel
Yakshini Lokam emphasises a fast-paced, action-packed style of gameplay. Played with a controller, character actions feel highly tactile and embodied, producing bumps, blasts and bounces as if they are really inhabiting a physical space.
The family’s epic struggle to escape an enchanted land and return home to their ordinary lives is intended to evoke fantasy journeys from films such as Spirited Away (2001). The overall tone is friendly and light-hearted, contributing to a cosy and comfortable play experience.