This grand strategy autobattler inspired by classics like Heroes of Might and Magic comes to life through 'hundreds of handmade oil painted illustrations'

Strategy fans, fantasy fans, and frankly, art fans: I've got a game you should keep an eye on. Erulean Angel: Fantasy Commander is an upcoming grand strategy autobattler, and as you can get a glimpse of in the announcement trailer above, it's packed with turn-based combat, overflowing with handmade illustrations, and inspired by classics of the strategy genre.

"Explore the land of Erulea as you command multiple armies to face off against challenging enemies in fully simulated autobattler combat that is easy to learn but packed with depth," reads the announcement sent to PC Gamer. "Recruit and train dozens of unique units on your journey to grow your ranks and expand your strategic possibilities."

This is the first game from developer Second Studio, and I recently had the chance to chat with its dev duo: Clark Filio is an artist and producer of HBO series How To With John Wilson, and Nathaniel Grossman is a Los Angeles-based musician and engineer.

"The gameplay is mostly in crafting these armies and building them and then testing them out," Filio said. "There's a lot of layers of creativity there for the player. You pick a commander, the commander influences what the units do. Based off how you position them, certain synergies will work or not work, and you have to counter the enemy synergies."

Each unit of the dozens available in the game has two abilities: a basic ability that fills a mana bar each time it's used, and a special ability that can be used once that mana bar is maxed. Along with standard units like swordsmen, archers, and healers, there are more exotic warriors you can recruit, like charmers who can reverse the allegiance of your enemies so they'll attack each other instead of you.

It's not all about making your army as large as you can, but picking and upgrading units that give you flexibility in different situations—even if you amass scores of units, your battleground grid won't always be big enough to support them all.

"The overworld battles can be pretty big, upwards of a few hundred units on the field at once, but in the dungeons you're tasked with figuring out a different strategy because you might only have space for 10 guys," Filio said.

What really gets my attention is the look of the game, a combination of 3D environments and eight-directional handmade sprites, along with "hundreds of handmade oil painted illustrations" of the units, each created by Filio in his studio. To me, the portraits of the units are reminiscent of illustrations in early Dungeons & Dragons manuals but also look like something you might find in a deck of tarot cards.

"It's not a card game, we're not calling it a card game, but it sort of borrows that aesthetic a lot," Filio said. "We think about it more as invoking a '90s tabletop RPG. And as well as the paintings, the 3D environments are all handmade."

Inspiration for Erulean Angel: Fantasy Commander comes from a number of places, the developers told me: Heroes of Might and Magic, Total War: Warhammer, Dominion, and even a Japanese dungeon-crawling RPG called Lunatic Dawn: Passage of the Book, which isn't even available in English without a fan translation.

Even the Souls series was, in part, an inspiration. "We're both big Souls-heads," said Grossman, explaining how upon losing a battle you respawn at "the last safe node you visited, akin to a bonfire."

There's no release date for Erulean Angel: Fantasy Commander yet, though the devs hope to have a demo later this year or in early 2026 as part of Steam Next Fest. In the meantime, you can find its page on Steam.