TL;DR – The Steam NextFest 2023 is part of a yearly “tradition” organised by Valve (our quasi-benevolent PC gaming overlords) during which legions of indie developers, and a few larger ones push out a demo for their upcoming game(s). Aside from the rule that you can only have a game featured in One NextFest there really aren’t any rules, and so the event serves as an abrupt buffet of indie games all vying for your attention with the hope that they’ll end up convincing you to buy them (or at least put them on your Wishlist so you get them years later on a steep discount). Due to the fact that I try to maintain a buffer in my “review” schedule, you’re probably reading this a long time after the event is over. Fortunately most developers keep the demos up long past the NextFest’s expiration date, although occasionally the demos get taken down immediately after the event is over (generally for the games that blew chunks).
Quick Note: I’ll include links to each game’s demo just incase you wanted to play them too, just click the title headings to be magically transported to the game’s Steam Store page.
Game #1: Warbits+
Starting off our review, a game that is excessively in my comfort-zone. Warbits+ is a rip-off homage of the Advance Wars (AW) series, with a cutesy art-style and just enough changes that it’s not a mere clone. While the demo is fairly short, it contains 6 campaign missions, 4 “skirmish” missions and 4 puzzle maps which is enough to last for about an hour. In that time you’ll realise that while most units are directly analogous to units from the AW series, the changes to prices and movement ensure that 1-to-1 copying of AW tactics won’t always work. The ranged basilisk unit, which is basically the rocket unit from AW for example is much weaker than it’s AW counter-part albeit it’s also a 1/3rd cheaper. There’s also a new unit in the form of the Ranger, which is basically a hybrid of the basic infantry unit and the artillery unit, as it can’t move & shoot or defend itself, but it can attack enemies that aren’t directly adjacent to it. For those who haven’t played any AW games, it’s basically a turn-based strategy game with around 2 dozen units split between ground/sea/air and most of these units can only attack enemies next to them. You’ve got infantry who can capture structures on the map, vehicles which generally destroy them without much difficulty and then ranged units which are super dangerous but can’t defend themselves when attacked. All units have up to 10 HP, and to get more units you need to gather funds from various captured buildings on the map, then spend them on units at your factory/airfield/port buildings. Players each take turns, and during each turn players move units one-at-a-time with each of those units having a set amount of ammo and fuel which are used for attacking and moving respectively.
With that super basic summary out of the way, I’ll just repeat that Warbits+ is basically just another Advance Wars game. The gameplay is almost identical, with a variety of modest tweaks that will only really be noticeable to AW veterans. Infantry only heal +1HP per turn on structures instead of +2HP, there’s a new type of city that requires half the capture points but provides half the income, some units are a bit weaker and there are no battle animations, among other minor changes. Yet in spite of or perhaps because of the abundant similarities I’m actually (somewhat) excited for Warbits+ to be released. You see, the game has 3 modes and while they appear to be fairly short each mode is enjoyable – as stated above you’ve got the campaign, a selection of challenge maps (called “skirmish mode”) and a puzzle mode. The campaign is pretty standard, a selection of maps which you play through in order and which start off very easy before ramping up slightly. This is also where the game’s story is told, although it’s more of a blip as the dialogue is minimal and at least in the demo doesn’t go anywhere – it’s basically just a vehicle to advance the game’s central premise that we’re in the FUTURE and battles are simulated between robot armies (hence why no one takes them particularly seriously). Then you’ve got the skirmish mode which is basically the “War Room” of Warbits+ and features a series of maps which are tilted towards the AI in various ways, with you as the player trying to beat them as quickly as possible while losing as few units as possible to receive a good score. Finally you’ve got the puzzle maps, which are basically unwinnable unless you do things in a very specific order and as such the challenge is using your limited forces to maximum effect to figure out how to actually win. Each mode is pretty fun and the core basics of the game are great because it’s basically just Advance Wars again. The art-style is also charming enough and the music is perfectly acceptable, but much like the campaign dialogue neither are hugely noteworthy. In short Warbits+ is a modest indie game which sets out to emulate the AW series and succeeds, but still offers enough to justify it’s existence.
Game #2: Tempest Rising
Following on from an unofficial sequel to Advance Wars, we’ve got an unofficial sequel to the Command & Conquer series. Unlike most of the other games in this glorified laundry list review Tempest Rising is actually a (relatively) big budget release and aside from Homeworld 3 is probably the most mainstream upcoming game in the RTS scene. The demo is unfortunately missing one of the three promised factions, but it still does a decent job of setting up the lore of the setting and the differences between two of the factions – namely the Global Defence Force (GDF) and the Tempest Dynasty (TD) who are filling in for GDI and Nod respectively. This means that you’ve got a high-tech but micro-intensive faction on the one side and a more basic “Attack Move to victory” on the other, although as the demo is just the first mission from the campaign for each it’s still a little hard to tell. The GDF mission gives you a modicum of base building, but the TD one only gives you a barracks and only at the lowest tech level so there’s no doubt a ton of depth I’m missing. Either way both factions are fighting over Tiberium Tempest which is a brand new energy albeit creepy energy source that is spreading across the planet following Kane’s Nuclear shenanigans. Our GDF “heroes” are essentially NATO and live in clean zones where Tiberium Tempest is just treated as a new resource, while the TD are comprised of former USSR states with a heavy reliance on local militia, conscripts Tempest Guard and flamethrowers who have a slightly more intense view of the resource.
Of course everything is going great in the world until the TD start causing trouble, at which point you get to playthrough at least two campaigns each told from the respective faction’s perspective. The other modes weren’t included in the demo, but both Skirmish (against the AI) and multiplayer modes are included. As for the game itself it’s basically a very pretty RTS with every mechanic from the original C&C, including most of the units, albeit with many units having one or more abilities (kinda like C&C Generals to give some perspective). You’ve got the same building mechanics, most of the units are refreshed versions of the ones from the original C&C, you’ve got the same story structure wherein a blinged up general refers to you as commander while giving you your mission briefings, the same 1 man = 1 unit philosophy, the same exploding barrels and pick-up crates and so on. As for how it plays? Perfectly fine, with all those little abilities no doubt giving RTS veterans enough micro to prove themselves to be the GOD GAMERS that they know they are. Yet for those hoping for something more, I’m afraid that it really does just seem to be C&C 1.5 (this time with more Russians). Even Frank Klepacki is back to do the soundtrack, so you know you’re in good hands there. It’s entirely possible that as the game opens up after the first couple of campaign missions that we’ll begin seeing some bold new twists, but thus far I’ve yet to see anything outside of the ability to call in airstrikes in exchange for cash (like C&C3) or a lot of units have 1 or more abilities (like C&C3). As such I’d recommend the demo to RTS fans, and indeed only to RTS fans. It’s only 2 intro missions so the whole thing takes less than an hour, even with the two unskippable trailers bookending each mission.
Game #3: Sentry
Unlike the previous two games, Sentry isn’t a spiritual successor to anything and is instead an indie game with minimal baggage centred around defending against waves of baddies. It’s an FPS game that promises to have co-op in the future, but in this demo you get two levels with either 4 or 5 waves (depending on whether you choose the normal or advanced difficulty). The core premise of the game is that you are a robot (the “Sentry” from the title) who is deployed into various sci-fi areas that are being besieged by hordes of evil aliens. Your heroic defence is split into two parts, you’ve got a setup/building phase where you get to construct various mini-structures such as ammo stations, turrets and traps that will help you resist the relentless enemy incursions. Then after 90 seconds (or once you hit ready) they begin pouring through a predesignated breach, with later waves often featuring multiple spawn locations for the enemy. As you have a relatively limited amount of resources to use for constructing buildings and traps, a core part of a successful strategy is to identify choke-points that the enemy can be forced through. The other major limitation for our plucky robot protagonist is the fact that you can only carry a modest amount of ammo at a time, so you’ll either need to keep running back to spawn or spend some of your limited resources on ammo stations. Both ammo stations and health stations are available, with a few important caveats. Firstly they themselves only have a limited amount of health/ammo they can give you, which is initially four magazines/small medkits with two additional uses being automatically generated provided you keep them around. Secondly to use these stations you’ll need to hold down the use button for a few seconds, which is fine so long as you aren’t actively getting shot at. Finally you’ll need to select these stations as part of your load-out, which much like everything else only has a modest amount of slots. As such you’ll need to share these useful tools with various traps.
This could’ve resulted in a slightly frustrating game, but there are a few aspects which give the player an advantage. Firstly while there are a decent amount of different enemies in this demo, almost all of them are pretty easy to deal with. You’ve got tiny slugs, quick attack dogs, enemy grunts, enemy grunts with guns & grenades, little flying beetles, shambling enemies with specific weak-spots and finally big guys with chain-guns. With the exception of the last two, your shotgun turrets shouldn’t have much of an issue when dealing with them (and for now the shotgun turret is much better than the machine gun turret). Secondly the maps themselves aren’t particularly large, so you don’t have to worry about getting flanked or taken by surprised – especially as the enemy spawn zones are clearly marked. Those aforementioned turrets also have unlimited ammo, which is handy although you can’t repair any damage they’ve taken. Finally the player gets 2 lives regardless of difficulty level, and if you respawn then you come back with full health, armour (if you took it as a utility item) and ammo. Each map also has a few pre-built health and ammo stations, so generally the only difficulty comes from managing your own ammo and cooldowns as the enemies aren’t particularly overwhelming. With that being said the Advanced difficulty provides a decent challenge, so you’ll need to be at least moderately competent if you want to prevent all the baddies from slipping through. You are allowed to let a couple get through your immaculately planned defences, but it’s always embarrassing when that one enemy waltzes past you. As for the rest of the game’s content, I can say the soundtrack is a decent electronic affair that isn’t overly intrusive but keeps the energy up, whilst the visual style looks nice even if it is somewhat low-poly. Speaking as someone who enjoyed the Orcs Must Die games, I must confess this game seems like it has a lot of potential and the demo is quite entertaining even if getting a perfect result on both levels only took me around 20 minutes.
Game #4: Wizordum
Wizordum is a game that’s not a rip-off, but more of a spiritual successor to the now ancient (and possibly long forgotten) Heretic, which came out around 30 years ago as of the time of writing. Like Hexen: Beyond Heretic, Wizordum is a 2.5D FPS game with all of the design philosophy of the “boomer shooter” era including keycards, pixel graphics, terrain objects that are always staring at you and a focus on finding the secrets and figuring out how to blast through each level while circle-strafing around the enemy. The demo itself is exceedingly short, giving you only two levels to playthrough even though the full game is releasing (in early access) before the end of this year. As such you’ve only got 3 different weapons and around 5 enemy types to deal with, none of which pose a massive threat. The game itself is fairly enjoyable at least in these two levels, as both the art style and minimal soundtrack are appropriately charming for a small game. The music itself loops continually and the track isn’t very long at all, but it does successfully capture the feeling of older fantasy games and even if it doesn’t amp up the pace like the OST from Sentry, it fits the game well. As for the visuals they’re appropriately pixelated, although they do feature a rich colour palete and each enemy type is easily identifiable and acts in a way that’s simple enough to counter. The combat isn’t particularly deep, at least in these early stages, but it is enjoyable and there is enough variety between the enemy types that you’ll need to keep on your toes least they nibble away at your health. Obviously it goes without saying that you’ve got the classic health/armour system, with vast quantities of pick-ups that help build your two respective health bars, and much like classic FPS games the larger items stop working at 100HP but you can exceed this quite handily by continuing to grab every smaller health item like a hypochondriac kleptomaniac.
Due to the relatively scarce amount of content offered, I don’t have a ton of things to say about Wizordum in all honesty. The gameplay is exactly as you’d expect from a 2.5D FPS game, right down to the fact that I managed to temporarily get stuck because I missed a new door that opened up after pulling a lever. Generally the two maps flow pretty well and I’m chalking my idiocy up to my own, well, idiocy but the game does have a handy-dandy map feature which is kind enough to mark doors you haven’t opened yet (and show what key is needed, if any). You’ll need to find this map within the level, but normally you get it fairly early in each stage so it’s not a massive ordeal to track it down. You also won’t have to go to far to find your weapons, although in a nod to the distant gaming past you only start with your melee weapon and will need to find the rest within each map. In the demo you get your melee weapon (the same mace as you get in Heretic) alongside “fire rings” which act as akimbo SMGs and the “Ice Staff” which acts as a machine gun. No shotgun, at least yet! As for the enemies you’ve got melee grunts, bigger melee guys, goblin wizards who can inflict friendly fire damage on the other enemies, alongside leaping rats and a loot goblin who drops loot (to build your score) after every hit. The only hazard in the absence of the ability to jump or fall down are various traps, which come in floor spikes and automated (automaged?) fire ball shooting variety. These aren’t going to cause you much trouble, but they can block you in when enemies start respawning or bursting through the walls. In short it’s a fun little demo and the game has promise as a neat little diversion on the inevitable path to the grave, so I’d recommend it to anyone who is somehow running low on Boomer Shooters to try.
Game 5: The Fancy Pants Adventures: Classic Pack
The Fancy Pants Adventures: Classic Pack (tFPA:CP) is a HD overhaul of the classic flash series, now with some added content in the form of new levels. This is great news for those who played the flash games back in the day, but despite spending countless hours on various flash game sites like Newgrounds, Kongregate and Armor Games I must confess I never really gave these ones a go. After trying out the demo I can safely say that I didn’t miss out on too much, as while they seem like a competently put together series of platformers I can’t see much to gush over here. The fancy pants guy has the smooth platforming control of an old Sonic The Hedgehog game, with even more of an emphasis on momentum and some slightly quirky movement controls when he’s not rushing around at the speed of sound. The game does have a life system alongside a health bar, although I’m not sure if they’ve been implemented properly or not as quite often when I hit a stage hazard or just an enemy I would instantly die and be respawned. The enemies also sometimes have health bars, and sometimes don’t, so I’m not able to definitely state how it all pans out. What I can say is that that while the presentation is suitably simple, it does look pretty nice after receiving a HD touch-up.
As for the soundtrack it’s a pretty basic looping affair, that I can only assume was carried over from the flash games as it’s kinda basic and loops a lot. Similarly the gameplay is also pretty basic, you run to the left and occasionally to the right, picking up little icons that are scattered around the stage like coins from sonic and uhhh that’s about it. There are a couple instances where the game boots you back to a previous level (ahhh… the reverse warps of Super Mario Bros 2) and you do have the ability to attack enemies with a big pencil. Something that would improve most platformers and is a particularly good idea here as jumping their little heads can be a bit finicky due to the momentum based movement controls. You’ve also got wall jumping, stage hazards, enemies that “patrol” a certain small area and so on. Really the main thing to commend would be the smaller details, such as enemies smiling when they hit you and looking nervous when you’re about to stomp them, or the fact that our fancy protagonist will have a little snooze ala Super Mario 64 should you leave the game idle. Otherwise I didn’t really care for this one and would rate it purely as a nostalgia trip for my fellow flash-kiddies, or potentially as something as interest for the handful of souls who are desperate for a 2D platformer.
Game 6: All Quiet in the Trenches
To be entirely honest, All Quiet in the Trenches (AQitT) was not at all what I was expecting as I downloaded all of these demos in a flurry of activity lest my place in the Steam Store’s infinitely loading download page be lost and force me to start looking over everything from the very top of the list again. In my unscrupulous haste I’d assumed that AQitT was going to be a turn-based strategy game based on defending the trenches from waves of attackers, an idea which had some basis in reality as that is one of the modes contained within this game. The game developers had other ideas for their project however and much like Valiant Hearts AQitT is more about the struggles of surviving the war with your squad of earnest (soon to be jaded) comrades in arms against the ensuing meat grinder of industrial warfare. As a consequence the actual combat takes a backseat in this one, serving to puncture the existing status quo of what turns out to be more of a management simulation than anything else. You see, AQitT has you serving as a sergeant in Ze German army and so it’s up to you to divvy out the various thankless tasks while trying to keep the chain of command off your back and your soldiers from pointing their guns at you. Due to this design choice, most of the game consists of you being given a series of tasks that may or may not be optional, which will need (or at least be recommended) that you finish during each of your “turns”. Helping the supply master unload rations, digging trenches, clearing the latrines, sending men to assist the field hospital (after they’ve washed their hands of course) and a bunch of other bureaucratic exercises are therefore the order of the day. Even when you’re in the trenches the core crux of the gameplay is broadly the same, as your troops will get tired from performing these actions and while they each have attributes that might make them better or worse at performing certain tasks, pushing an individual trooper too far will make them less effective. Having tired troops affects morale, which must be kept up lest they perform worse and you start getting stuck in a negative loop. Likewise you need to perform tasks for your commanding officer and failing to do them will result in you gradually getting assigned more and more lousy jobs to do. So it’s a management sim with some dialogue trees (basically involving relating to / offending various people) and trying to keep everyone happy all the time. With the occasional bit of turn based quasi-combat where you need to position your troops and prevent them from getting all shot up.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the game has a stylised cell shaded approach to the visuals whilst still being realistic enough that you can grasp the full War is Hell message that the game is ultimately shooting for. As for the OST it’s appropriately minimal and muted, although there are the standard sound effects of gunfire, artillery and a guy going AAAAAA every now and then. Unfortunately I can’t really vouch for the narrative chops of the game as this is going to be an experience where it all really starts going to hell towards the end of the war and as our demo is set during 1915 we’re only given the “good” years when Ze Germans were relentlessly bullying the French/Russians/Romanians and it seemed like the war was winnable for them. As such I have no doubt that things really start to pick up towards the end of the game, but based on what I’ve actually been able to play it’s basically just juggling how tired everyone is and occasionally choosing to give them more or less rations depending on how many rats the cook has to deal with. As mentioned above there’s also a dialogue tree system with various characters who aren’t in your unit, but as of my experience with the demo this basically just boiled down to “give me more work so my soldiers can be even more tired!” because the poor bastards are seemingly always tired. There’s also that combat as mentioned before which can be tense, but I suspect that was more because I didn’t really know what I was doing and so my boys ended up getting flanked a couple of times. Probably a more accurate assessment of my battlefield capabilities than the Command and Conquer games but I digress. Anyway I’d say overall that everything is entirely functional and that this is a game that manages to get you involved with the bureaucratic nature of the first world war, albeit I’m not sure who I would recommend this one to. Kids studying the war perhaps? I personally just think that the juxtaposition of occasional shoot out, lots of chin-wagging with various supply masters and juggling a bunch of fatigue bars make this a tough one for management sim enthusiasts and also a bit too slow paced for any TBS game fans. Ultimately it seems like an interesting game which I fully intend to be damning with fine praise as I have no idea who this game is actually for outside of a small contingent of history nerds who don’t really care about the actual gameplay.
Game 7: The Last Exterminator
The Last Exterminator on the other hand is exactly what is prescribed, namely another one of these boomer shooters doing the rounds and trying their absolute best to out Duke the legendary Duke Nukem himself. Interesting enough the game’s quick demo blurb states that The Last Exterminator (TLE) is running on an entirely bespoke and new engine, although I must confess that it bears an uncanny resemblance to all of the build engine games out there. The only difference I could really notice was that the enemies seemed to be uncannily accurate, almost as if they were using hit-scan weapons like those chain-gunners in the original Doom (no not the 2016 one). Otherwise this extremely short demo, which only take 10 minutes to playthrough, offers a good Duke-esque experience for any punter willing to give it a quick go. You’ve got a handful of weapons and enemies to mess around with, including a pistol, double-barrelled shotgun, SMG and some exploding demolition disks which basically work like throwable landmines and serve as the game’s equivalent to grenades, dynamite etc. As for the enemies you’ve only got standard pistol wielding grunts, some shotgun wielding baddies with a touch more health and then some big charging brutish melee fellows who mainly serve as a distraction due to the fact that every other enemy has exceedingly good aim. Unlike our protagonist, who in a slight diversion from the other 2.5D games I’ve played doesn’t get any aim assist at all by default when using the mouse & keyboard. You can enable it in the options, but I went in expecting the Shotgun to be practically heat-seeking as it was in Doom and instead I quickly had to re-learn how to actually bloody aim the damn thing. Especially as it only does partial damage if you’ve only partially hit the enemy, something which sounds pretty common in these more refined days of truly 3D combat but which did take me by surprise! As such it’s a clearly modern game trying to ape the conventions of the classic 90s shooter experience, which it largely achieves thanks to it’s strong visual design and no nonsense level design (or at least I assume it’s no nonsense as you’re only allowed to play one of them in this itty bitty demo).
Obviously with the demo being so short, it’s hard to get a good grasp of what the final product will look like even if the post-demo sales blurb screen you get once you’ve finished the only level promises SIXTEEN enemies, a level editor and a bunch more guns to arse around with. From what I’ve played though the combat is decent and pretty fast paced with accuracy being key, alongside what I’m hoping to be a decent variety of enemies and some more level variation. The one level you get to play through is riddled with nods and homages which are too numerous to list, but interactivity is fairly pared back compared to the rest of the pack at least at this stage in development. There was a little arcade machine that had a mini-game to play (a 2D auto-scrolling shooter) but other than that you can’t expect vending machines to drop cans or phones to make a little noise when you try to use them. One thing that was in full evidence was the fact that we have a voiced protagonist who in Nukem style starts her crusade following the loss of her ride (in this case just a van) and who makes plenty of comments throughout the game. I thought it was a nice touch and a way to reinforce that this is a game with it’s tongue firmly in cheek, even if I felt the voice acting was a tad weak in the sense that she sounds pretty normal for a mass-killer. Maybe this is part of the charm, but either way was something I noticed while playing. As for soundtrack it’s quite minimal and feels like a cheesy Duke clone, for better or for worse and doesn’t make the game feel more intense but instead more… retro? Either way I didn’t have any actual issues with anything and had fun over my admittedly short playthrough of the demo, which I would recommend to any FPS fans. If you’re of the opinion that the boomer shooter trend has gone on long enough, this definitely won’t convince you otherwise, but for everyone else this is a pretty straight forward shooter with a retro styling and of course everyone’s favourite keycards that lock off sections of the stage. At least in this one the keycards are in pretty organic places, so you would have to really struggle to get lost!
Game 8: Last Train Home
Rounding things off is (the) Last Train Home (LTH), a RTT (Real Time Tactics) game centred around the Czech Foreign Legion and taking place during the Russian civil war, when those poor bastards had to make their way across the entirety of Russia so that they could get home. LTH has been a game I’ve been keeping my eye on for a while, as it promises to combine genuinely high production values with an interesting premise, solid RTT combat and the addition of management gameplay conducted via the game’s overview stages which occur between skirmishes. After playing through the demo I can confirm that basically all of these expectations were met, but I must confess that I didn’t actually find myself having any fun with the actual demo itself and as a consequence I’m now somewhat concerned about how the whole thing is going to pan out. There are two reasons for my concern, the first being the RTT combat sections and the second being the train management that takes place in between battles. Before diving into these concerns though I’d just like to re-iterate that this is a polished and ambitious game, with good visuals, plenty of gameplay mechanisms that all work in tandem with each other and a large degree of care has evidently taken place to ensure that this game lives up to it’s potential. It’s just that… I’m a long-time RTS, RTT and TBS fan and even I wasn’t enjoying it. Firstly while the RTT sections are detailed and involve everything you’d expect including a tiered cover system, enemy vision, stealth options, multiple classes of legionary each of which have different abilities, the ability to find and obtain new items while each map, usable entrenchments and callable off-map abilities like artillery barrages the whole thing felt somewhat clunky. Part of this is that you can’t see how far your units can actually shoot, which means you can end up taking up position in a very secure area with good cover only to have most of your guys not do anything. Then when you tell them to attack, they leap out of cover to stand up straight in the middle of a field or street. You’ve also got the multiple class mechanics, which while varied and offering high potential as the game proceeds are initially a pain in the arse as if you select multiple squad mates you can only see the abilities for one of them. So you need to quickly scan the squad bar at the bottom, pick say the grenadier, then select his ability, then deploy it when really all you wanted to do was have a squad member throw a damn grenade. There’s also the stealth mechanic, which is a cool concept especially in a game where ammo usage is disincentivised, but the way it’s actually implemented is again, a pain in the arse. Basically you select a squad member (or members) and hit the Y key, at which point they are in stealth mode and won’t shoot enemies but are quieter and can do stealth kills. Of course if they’re in a good position for covering fire, you’ll need to manually tell them that stealth has failed. Alternatively if they are spotted trying to sneakily stab someone, then they’ll kind of just gormlessly stand there for a couple seconds while they get beat up and/or shot. It’s not the most fluid system, which is troublesome because the combat is fast paced. Most enemies and even most of your guys go down in a few shots, so group firefights can be exceedingly lethal for anyone outside of cover (although if you’re in cover there may as well be a gigantic magnet opposite you considering how often shots now miss, something which the enemy also benefits from). Then you’ve got deployable abilities such as having your squad’s machine gunner setup a focused zone of fire, which works well but you then need to manually disable this otherwise he’ll just sit there like a twat as everyone else moves on. That’s the core issue really, in that while micromanagement is a key part of any RTT game you need to micromanage fucking everything here and Christ help anyone you forget to tell to move back once he’s done riffling through sacks of grain, otherwise he’s just going to stay there until a patrol guns him down. Of course RTT veterans are going to shaking their heads in disbelief at reading these braying complaints from an evident NOOB, but I swear even considerably older games like Men of War didn’t need this level of babysitting. I could trust my guys to lie down, shoot at anything that came in range, know when stealth failed and use AT grenades on any tank that came close enough. Here each action would need to be assigned manually, and of course that AT grenade ability would only be available to the grenadier who would have selected manually because I’m only seeing the medic’s abilities right now. It’s a perfectly fine RTT experience that’s really in need of some squad level AI tweaking to make me feel like a Major, not a nanny.
But let’s say you’re pumping the air in joy at the prospect of managing multiple vulnerable units, who need to be assigned groups manually, with each group only being able to see the abilities of one randomly selected squad member at a time, who all need to be told to take cover. Well then the good news for you my micromanagement loving friend is that the fun does NOT stop there! Oh no! Because once you’ve beaten a skirmish, you now get to perform a bunch of micromanagement on your troop train as well. Assigning each legionary to a train role, across both day and night shifts? Yeah that’s here. Having to manually reassign these roles when legionaries get injured? Yeah that’s here too. Having to keep track of multiple separate resources? You better believe that’s here! Between the promotions, managing the speed of the train, how many rations everyone gets, what roles they have, what skills they have, whether to stop at a village doctor or use up your limited supplies of med-kits, upgrading the train and dealing with breakdowns and maintenance of the train, it’s a lot. Unfortunately the demo is basically one tutorial message after the other and while I can appreciate the depth, and the fact that things will inevitably get easier as you get to grips with the system, by God is it fucking tedious. Every single time you think you’ve figured out new micromanagement task G, the game reveals with a beamingly bright smile that you’ve now unlocked tutorial message #27 about micromanagement task H because now your troops are sad and you need to decide whether to use vodka and risk them becoming more tired (micromanagement task F) or stop the train to dispatch a squad to gather more food to temporarily increase the amount of rations you give (assuming the cook didn’t get injured). It’s just so goddamn much to pack into a demo that’s meant to be selling you on a game that’s imminently about to release, especially when it’s one-after-another for the full duration of the damn thing. The worst part about it is that the UI, while pretty is also not great at just making things easier. I have some idle guys, I’d like them to be more useful, how can I see how to do this? Well it turns out that right now they can only be workers during the train segments and we have enough of those, but maybe if you get some other squad members they can be the cook in the event that my current cook who is assigned to a squad because he’s the best machine gunner gets injured. I really can’t describe how annoying it is, that a game that I know is enjoyable is just such a fucking mess of menus and mechanics and other things to juggle. It’s like starting a new job where they didn’t bother training you, but everyone expects you to be up to speed already. If you’ve ever tried temping with an agency it’s like that, but with more Czech people complaining about the Red Army. Which isn’t even to say this is a bad game, the potential is clearly there. The RTT missions aren’t bad or poorly paced or anything they’re just unintentionally annoying. As for the train management, I have no doubt it gets engrossing juggling all those balls while researching +10% more resilient squad cars that can hold +2 more people. But as a demo this really needs you to be fully engaged with the premise and willing to learn without swearing at it. I failed in this mighty task, because after 90 minutes I was loudly bemoaning the fact that I have to open and close 3 different bloody screens to figure out how to make a nurse work the night shift, only to realise that I had to upgrade my train. In summary it’s a very well polished game with a barbed wire barrier to entry, claw your way through and I have 0 doubt it’s a good time for RTT and strategy game fans. For me? I’m absolutely bricking it as this was my strategy game of the year and I spent most of the demo reading tutorial messages. Even the cunting zoom in feature causes you to zoom into your train after a certain point, even if you’re not looking at anything near it. When I’m getting grief from the act of zooming in I know I’m out of my depth.
The Summary
Alright so after playing through 8 demos (and dropping 2 after a couple of minutes, namely Motordoom which blasted my house with shit metal after demanding I plug in a controller for a not terrible control scheme, and Peripeteai which was Deus Ex with a weird anime girl protagonist player model and an intro that consisted of me dropping an item through a floor then getting filtered by a hacking mini-game) I can safely say that I have my clear winners and losers. Obviously the biggest losers are the two games that I barely even played, because they sucker punched me in the face and killed my pathetically thin veil of impartially stone dead as I realised that bad metal music and animoo gurls are my personal kryptonite for these things. Following them would be Fancy Pants adventures which I thought was fucking trash and should’ve stayed on Newgrounds to be totally honest, alongside Last Train Home which I was really excited to play and bored me to the point I got a headache (possibly also due to my recent substitute of cigarettes with Snus and staring at screens all day but I digress). Barely saved from the ranks of games I can’t fucking recommend to a living soul would be Tempest Rising, another game I was pretty excited about but which is just C&C without the cool C&C characters or any attempt to evolve the gameplay. I mean I love C&C, every RTS fan does, but fuck me guys would it kill you to take a step back and go “yeah everyone is still talking about Kane, and we’re never ever going to beat Starcraft 2 so let’s worry about the characters & macro, not the graphics & micro”? I don’t know, I just think it’s going to come and go like Company of Heroes 3 or Grey Goo, and only get briefly mentioned in passing while people discuss how much C&C Tiberium Sun and Red Alert 2 and Starcraft 1 and Age of Empires 2 were soooo good. Then I’m going to give participation awards to Wizordum and All Quiet in the Trenches, which are games I think aren’t going to set the world on fire (especially the latter) but hey they were interesting and tried and I wish the developers the best. Maybe they’ll be in a Humble Monthly by the time literally anyone reads this pointless recap. As for the winners? Well I had a lot of fun with Warbits, which I think is going to be another decent but not quite as good as Advance Wars TBS game and would recommend it as it was fun. Which was the whole point of downloading 10 demos on my slow internet connection. Similarly The Last Exterminator was also… fun! Super short sure but what was there was cool and what was promised sounds good and hell, the Aussie government (or at least Victoria) is helping to fund it so go get em blokes! Finally there’s Sentry which is a neat little FPS defence game that I think would be fun to play with friends, whenever I actually make some that want to play something other than trash like [INSERT THAT GAME YOU LIKE HERE]. In conclusion, Warbits for the TBS fans, The Last Exterminator for FPS fans and Sentry for co-op fans. I’m not going to pretend my winners are the best or anything, but those would be my actual recommendations. Everything else is basically “it could be good BUT” or “I didn’t have fun, but maybe someone else will!”