While cover plays a lesser role than in XCOM, positioning is still important, as some enemies can use Area of Effect (AoE) attacks or shoot through several Heroes in one hit. They’re led by a “Lapse”, a floating blue spectre with a ranged attack and a nasty habit of exploding when it dies and stunning anyone nearby for a full turn. You’ll then be launched straight into a battle against a few low-level enemies called “Seeds”, which are fairly harmless plant-like mutants.

Each house has a crest, a patriarch and matriarch, and a motto. You’ll first be asked to select five ruling Houses from a huge list of community-made options. The Chalice itself acts as your guide and mentor, its dual-gender split-personality providing advice and witticisms in equal measure.

You are the ruler of the kingdom, and you just so happen to be handily immortal, the magic of the titular Massive Chalice sustaining you for centuries as you fight to defeat the Cadence. The action takes place in a kingdom beset by an encroaching corruption called the “Cadence”, which devours the land and births mutated monsters who terrorise the countryside and generally murder, maim and manhandle the common folk. The biggest difference is that Massive Chalice takes a leaf out of Game of Thrones’ book where your Heroes’ well-being is concerned. There are several classes to field, each with unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and between combat you’ll retire to a base of operations where you can research upgrades, items, tactics and buildings. You move characters around a grid-based environment, attempting to take out the enemy as quickly and efficiently as possible while saving as many of your squad as you can. In fact, it’s so similar when on the field of battle that veterans of Enemy Unknown will be immediately at home. I say “homage” because I like DoubleFine, but in truth Massive Chalice is simply very, very similar to Firaxis’ top-down tactical UFO-blaster. If you’re not a fan of the Reaper now, you’ll be even less enamoured by the time you’ve spent a few hours in DoubleFine’s Game of Thrones-flavoured XCOM homage. Well, wait until you play Massive Chalice. It scuppers plans, ruins birthdays, keeps Sean Bean confined to the first third of pretty much anything he stars in, and is generally agreed by all to be a bit of a pain. If nothing else, death is a massive, massive inconvenience.

Criticism of the chalice and the blade