Once upon a time, in a land very distant from our own, a wretched yet divine being, rainlash, created a pygame-based fan-game named The Lion Throne. It was a game of modest length and some novel features, especially by the standards of 2017. However, along with the game came a curious thing: a fan-engine, a new pillar to stand alongside FEXNA and SRPG Studio, which didn’t even exist at the time.
Years passed, and Lex Talionis, for that was the engine’s name, grew in support and became a popular engine among individuals who had forsaken the path of GBA wizardry. And yet…rainlash still never made a Lex Talionis thread on FEUniverse! What’s up with that?! Does he hate discoverability? To be fair, I’ve seen you guys, I would hate to be discovered too, but like, earlier today I had someone in my game thread be like I don’t know how to play LT games and honestly it’s about time someone printed at least the basics around here. If Ultrax can make FEBuilder tutorials without being 7743, then, by the gods, I can at least do this.
If you’re PLAYING a Lex Talionis game, it is as simple as downloading the compressed file given to you, extracting the contents, and double-clicking the .exe. There is, at the time of this writing, a folder next to the .exe. Keep it in the same location as the .exe as that folder is the actual game, but otherwise you do not need to interact with it. Some older games may have .bat files that say “double_click_to_play.bat”. It may surprise you to know that you do, indeed, just double click it to play.
- Note that, oftentimes, Windows Defender will mention that a Lex Talionis game is potentially malware. This is normal behavior, and makes sense if you think about it: you’re being handed an unverified .exe by some bozo off a Fire Emblem fan forum. If you trust the publisher, click Run Anyway. If you don’t, I wouldn’t blame you.
On mobile, there is currently no native Lex Talionis support. However, eretein has written this guide that will allow Android users to play via emulation of Windows on their phones.
There is currently no dedicated support route for Apple products. I think you can use Wine, but I haven’t tried it myself.
If you seek to MAKE a Lex Talionis game, you need to get the engine and editor, “lt-maker”. Installation and usage thereof are described in the LT maker documentation, here linked to the “Getting Started” page. Follow the instructions here if you wish to use LT in a way akin to FEBuilder without ASM (i.e. just eventing). If you have python or general coding experience and plan on making changes to the engine itself, click the Python Installation link (or just here if you’re lazy).
It also has a website (thanks aorlnn). I bet none of you knew that.