Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗Sons of the Arena: Pollice Verso
Ruby Coconut · Published by Ruby Coconut
Content notice: Sons of the Arena: Pollice Verso depicts gladiatorial combat with realistic violence, blood, dismemberment, and on-screen deaths. Fighters can be wounded, maimed, or killed during battles, with permanent consequences. There is no sexual content, drug use, or other mature themes - the mature content is limited to combat violence and gore consistent with the gladiator setting.
Last updated 28 Sept 2026
Train gladiators. Manage your ludus. Send them to the sand to fight, win, and bleed. Turn-based hex tactics where stamina, formations, and four classes — Swordsman, Spearman, Archer, Mace Fighter — decide every match. Permadeath makes every loss final.
Indie, RPG, Strategy · 2027 · More free games
About this game
Sons of the Arena is a turn-based tactical game where you run a gladiator school in a brutal world inspired by Ancient Rome. Buy fighters at the slave market, equip them, train them in real combat — and watch them grow or die.
Hex-based tactical combat
Battles play out on a hex arena in the tradition of classic turn-based strategy. Position is everything: facing, flanking, line of sight, terrain, and zones of control shape every turn. There are no resurrections — when a gladiator falls, his gear goes back to the armory and his name to the wall of remembrance.
Four classes, real choices
Recruits start as basic gladiators and specialize at level 2 based on their weapon:
Swordsman — master of counterattacks, high parry, lethal in single combat.
Spearman — long reach, shield-wall formations, "Push" skill to break enemy lines.
Archer — covers the whole arena, area volleys, no zone of control.
Mace Fighter — crushes armor, +50% damage against targets shielded by allies.
Stamina, formations, perks
Every action costs stamina: a tired fighter hits softer and misses more often. The enemy AI uses real formations — shield walls, wolf-pack flanks, archer screens — so the same skirmish never plays out the same way twice. Level-up perks let you specialize each fighter: "Last Stand," "Spear Wall," "Quick Shot," "Battle Cry."
Run your ludus
Between fights you manage the school: build barracks, infirmary, smithy, and quarry; hire workers and healers; feed your fighters — or watch them weaken. Wounds heal in real days. Money is always tight.
Pre-alpha — in active development
The game is in active development. Wishlist it to be notified when the demo drops.
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- OS: Windows 10 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel Core i3-4000 / AMD equivalen
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Integrated graphics with OpenGL 3.0 support
- Storage: 500 MB available space
- Sound Card: Any
Recommended
- OS: Windows 10/11 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel Core i5 / AMD equivalent
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Dedicated GPU with 1 GB VRAM
- Storage: 1 GB available space
- Sound Card: Any
Supported Languages
Latest news
AnnouncementsOfficial
Porting XCOM's core into melee combat
I'm porting XCOM's core into melee combat. Here's why. What always kept me in XCOM wasn't the aliens or the hit chances. It was one question, every single turn: "This tile gives me a perfect shot. But the cover is bad and I'm flanked. Where do I stand?" And there usually is no perfect tile. You pick the least bad one, knowingly accept a specific risk, and then build a turn order around it: this one moves first and eats the overwatch, that one flanks second, and the grenade stays in the pocket in case it all goes sideways. You don't just take a position. You place a bet and ride it for several turns, and then you pay up. That, to me, is XCOM's core. Not the squad, not turn-based. A chain of compromises you answer for later. Now look at turn-based melee games. That question is almost always dead, replaced by three things: Unique heroes. Tactics become abilities: this guy has an ult, that one a combo. Builds decide, not positions.Stat checks. Units stand face to face and trade hits. Bigger numbers win. Tiles are just the distance to the enemy.Macro layer. Earn more gold, get stronger warriors, win the fight before it starts. All three share one root. The interest in a fight is assigned in advance: the developer decides what will be curious about this particular scrap and hands it to the player. Here's a boss with a gimmick, here's a scripted ambush, here's a check on the build you assembled. Great games are made this way, no argument. But the approach has a price: every interesting fight has to be handcrafted. So those fights are rarely worth replaying for their own sake, and something else has to hold the player: the plot, the campaign, squad management, the economy. That works beautifully, no question. It just turns the fight into a pretext rather than the point. XCOM works the other way around. Its maps are built from templates too, but what makes a fight interesting isn't a writer, it's circumstance: how the cover fell, where the patrol wandered off to, who you win...Read full article on Community Announcements (Sons of the Arena)AnnouncementsOfficial
Why it was quiet here: the game is being repainted (before and after)
Hi! I am the solo developer of Sons of the Arena. This page went up in May and has been silent since. Not because the game died, quite the opposite: I went heads-down into the biggest rework of the project.The entire game is moving to a hand-painted, oil-on-canvas look. The old visuals were cartoonish and honestly a bit generic. I wanted something more serious, a game that feels like a living Roman painting.The store page still shows the old visuals, I will refresh it by the end of August. Today is the first honest report: before and after, straight from the current build. Everything below is work in progress.THE ARENANew stands, crowd, sand and light. Fights now happen inside a painting.THE ESTATEYour ludus, rebuilt from scratch as a single painted scene with a full day and night cycle. It is alive now: gladiators spar in the pit, workers tend the fields, windows light up at dusk, and someone always sneaks off to the tavern at night.THE FORGESame forge, new coat of oil. Every piece of equipment still changes how your gladiator looks, slot by slot.It will not be quiet here anymore. The next post is about the combat core, the one question this game was built around from day one. Questions are welcome in the discussions. And if you like where this is going, a wishlist means a lot to a solo dev.Read full article on Community Announcements (Sons of the Arena)
