Wielders of the Essence turns Songs of Conquest into a gorgeous survivors-like

I booted up the Wielders of the Essence demo, looked at the chunky pixel-art fantasy world, the Wielders, the little creatures running around and all that magic flying across the screen, and immediately thought: “Hey, this looks like Songs of Conquest!”

Then I checked who made it.

Oh.

Yeah. It is literally Lavapotion, the studio behind Songs of Conquest, and Wielders of the Essence is officially a spin-off set in the same world. Mystery solved. Great detective work on my part.

So yeah, it really is Songs of Conquest

The resemblance is not some vague case of one pixel-art fantasy game looking like another. Lavapotion describes Wielders of the Essence as a spin-off set in the world of Songs of Conquest, and the connection goes much deeper than the graphics.

You are still a Wielder. Essence still powers magic. Troops still matter. The creatures, environments, chunky sprites, colors, spell effects, and general fantasy flavor immediately feel related to Lavapotion’s strategy game.

Except this time I am not positioning armies on a turn-based battlefield and thinking about which spell gives me the best tactical swing. I am running around while an increasingly unreasonable number of creatures tries to murder me.

Which, to be fair, is a pretty good use of the setting.

And visually? Man, this thing is lovely if you dig Lavapotion’s art style. The big readable sprites, colorful environments, exaggerated spell effects and tiny units running alongside you turn the screen into a miniature fantasy battle without losing the unmistakable Songs of Conquest identity.

How Wielders of the Essence changes the survivors formula

The basic survivors-like loop is obviously here. Move around. Avoid getting surrounded. Kill hundreds of things. Collect loot and experience. Get stronger. Watch the screen become progressively more ridiculous.

But the bit I found interesting is that Wielders of the Essence does not make the Wielder a completely self-contained murder machine.

You can recruit troops during a run, and those troops do more than simply add extra bodies to the battlefield. They generate Essence, and Essence feeds your spellcasting. So there is a nice little chain happening underneath all the chaos: build your company, generate more magical power, throw increasingly nasty spells around, survive long enough to bring resources home.

Then there is the town.

Resources collected during runs feed persistent settlement development, and new buildings unlock things such as troops, stronger spells and skills for later attempts. That gives the game an incremental side that feels more structural than simply dumping points into a permanent stat screen.

I also really like the short-run idea. Lavapotion advertises runs at around eight minutes, which puts the game much closer to “alright, one more before I go do something responsible” territory than some of the longer survivor sessions out there.

Whether the full progression stays interesting across the roughly eight-hour campaign is something I cannot judge from the demo. But the slice I played was genuinely fun, easy to understand and just different enough that I did not feel like I was merely playing Vampire Survivors with frogs pasted over it.

Wielders of the Essence vs. Warhammer Survivors

Of course, there is a slight problem here.

I have already played the new Warhammer Survivors demo.

And, uh, I already wrote a whole first-impressions piece about how much I loved the thing.

These two games actually make a useful comparison because they show how quickly the survivors-like space is moving away from the idea that every new release has to be “Vampire Survivors, except the sprites are different.”

Wielders feels smaller, faster and a little more relaxed. There is a satisfying rhythm to going out, causing magical amphibian violence for a few minutes, dragging resources home and watching the settlement become more useful.

Warhammer Survivors feels much more like somebody has taken the genre foundation and started throwing entire boxes of hobby toys at it. More than 40 playable champions, 75-plus weapons, two Warhammer settings, faction-specific enemies, giant Extremis bosses, companion-style weapons and all sorts of tabletop jokes are planned for the full release.

And that is before we get to stuff like D6 dice falling from the sky or Nuln Oil being turned into an actual weapon.

Come on.

How am I supposed to resist that?

Everybody is trying something different now

That might be my favorite thing about the genre right now. Vampire Survivors established an absurdly effective foundation, but the interesting games are increasingly asking what else they can bolt onto it.

Brotato compresses the idea into frantic short waves, a shop phase and a ridiculous multi-weapon build system. Halls of Torment pushes toward old-school action RPG territory with quests, equipment and items you can extract for later runs.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor takes the swarm concept underground and makes mining, mission objectives and navigating destructible caves part of the survival problem. You are not merely circling enemies until your build becomes ridiculous. Sometimes the wall itself is standing between you and whatever you need.

Then you get stranger experiments. NIMRODS lets weapons assembled in earlier attempts return during later runs as drones. Picayune Dreams smashes proper bullet-hell attack patterns into the survivors structure. And Warhammer Survivors is turning “weapons” into followers while layering faction rules and stage objectives onto the basic formula.

Wielders of the Essence has its own answer: what if your survivors run fed a little fantasy army and an actual town?

That is a good enough idea to give it its own identity.

If you want to dig further into how weird this genre has become, our Games like Vampire Survivors guide has a much bigger selection.

More survivors-likes and Songs of Conquest on G2A.COM

Wielders of the Essence is on Steam, so if the frog wizard has already won you over, you can also check Steam gift cards on G2A.COM.

And if this whole thing has simply put you in the mood for more horde-clearing nonsense, there are a few obvious neighbors worth checking.

Who should play Wielders of the Essence?

The obvious audience is anyone who already likes Songs of Conquest and wants to see Lavapotion’s world doing something completely different.

But I do not think you need any history with Songs of Conquest to get it. If you like survivor-likes but want something built around very short runs, persistent settlement progression and a stronger relationship between your hero and a supporting army, this one has a neat pitch of its own.

And if you simply look at screenshots and think “that is gorgeous,” well, yeah. Same. The art style is probably going to do a lot of the selling here. It has that almost miniature-diorama quality Songs of Conquest does so well, except now the whole miniature is moving at once and half of it is on fire.

The swamp was fun, but I’m reporting for Warhammer duty

So where did I land after playing the demo?

I had fun. Quite a bit of it, actually.

Wielders of the Essence looks gorgeous if Lavapotion’s pixel-art fantasy style does anything for you, the troop-and-Essence system gives its combat a nice little twist, and turning the between-run grind into actual town development makes the progression feel more tangible than another anonymous upgrade menu.

It also proves something I am starting to appreciate about survivor-likes: this genre has plenty of room left for people to mess with the formula.

Wielders gives me frogs, troops, magic and town building.

Warhammer Survivors gives me bolters, chainswords, Tyranids, Guardsmen, D6 dice, Nuln Oil and an excuse to commit increasingly stupid quantities of heresy prevention.

I am sorry, Lavapotion.

I had a lovely time in the swamp. But I am still Team Warhammer. Survivors is the one I am waiting for. XD