TimeGate Studios built Axis & Allies on the same engine they used for Kohan II, which released about a month later. Kohan was a supply-line-focused RTS that thought about logistics as a first-class mechanic rather than an afterthought, and supply lines were central to how the 2004 Axis & Allies played. The game was published by Atari and released on November 2, 2004 – six years after the Hasbro...
A crisis system deep dive for the Battlestar Galactica tactical game, a new Blood Bowl with a demo arriving next week, dynasty mechanics in The Guild: Europa 1410, and Going Medieval showing off its 1.0 content three days out from launch. Here is everything worth knowing heading into the weekend. Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes Shows Off the Crisis System Dotemu and Alt Shift have released a new gameplay video...
Steam’s Tower Defense Fest brings discounts, a new DLC, and a demo running through March 16. Age of Wonders 4 drops its latest expansion today alongside a free update for everyone. Xenonauts 2 finally has a 1.0 date after nearly three years in early access. And Stellar Warfare has pushed...
One Lucky Lightening Strike Often, when the writer describes incessant rainfall battering the neon covered buildings of a future city, it is to contextualize the overwhelming forces working against the relatable anti-hero taking the beating of the weather in defiance. This time, every individual droplet impacts concrete skin, steel cartilage,...
Impressions Games was founded in 1988 by David Lester, a trained accountant who had launched the company at 22 and turned a deal with footballer Kenny Dalglish into a hit sports management game that funded everything that followed. By 1992, Impressions had opened a US division, first in Farmington, Connecticut,...
It wasn’t that long ago that I went on record to claim that RTS might not be dead, but it was on life support. You can watch that video, and agree or disagree as you see fit, here: The numbers backed it up. New releases struggle to find traction and be noticed, but remasters from 20 years ago perform well. The irony is that the RTS community constantly says...
Max Design was founded in 1991 by Wilfried Reiter and brothers Albert and Martin Lasser in Schladming, a small town in the Austrian Alps. By 1996 the studio was in financial difficulty, close to collapse, with previous titles like the trading simulation 1869 — Hart am Wind! having built a following but not enough revenue to guarantee survival. That April, the team began work on what would become Anno...
By 1994 the 4X space strategy game had already settled into a set of comfortable assumptions. Master of Orion, released by MicroProse the previous year, had established the canonical shape of the genre: a sprawling galaxy of dozens of star systems, a technology tree requiring careful long-term investment, diplomatic relationships...
Strategy games have a reputation outside of the community for being tough to break. Impenetrable mechanics, tutorials which assume you know what you’re doing, and punishing enemies who will ruin you if you put one foot wrong. That reputation is well earned. It’s not the easiest genre to get into,...
A correction from last weekend to lead with, plus a major Stormgate patch, new Transport Fever 3 details, a diplomacy overhaul for a 4X worth watching, and a Battlestar Galactica tactical game with a demo live right now. Here is everything worth knowing heading into the weekend. Going Medieval Moves...
Triumph Studios was founded in Delft in 1997 by Arno van Wingerden and Lennart Sas, two friends who had met during their studies and shared an appetite for strategy games. The studio’s first and only project was the game that became Age of Wonders, though it had not always been...
A busy few days of announcements to work through. Old World is heading to South Asia, Cities: Skylines is turning 11 with a full month of content, and a handful of releases are coming up fast. Here is everything worth knowing from the middle of the week. Old World Heads...
Sid Meier has a definition of a game that gets quoted a lot: a series of interesting decisions. Civilization is what happens when that idea is applied to the whole of human history. It started with boredom. By 1989, Meier had built MicroProse’s reputation on flight simulators and military titles....
On Saturday 28th February 2026 the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran. Operation Epic Fury hit Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, and multiple other cities. Iran retaliated with missiles aimed at Israel and US military bases across the Gulf. Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE were all targeted. This...
The strategy gaming release schedule never really stops, and this week is no exception. Railroad Corporation 2 finally hits 1.0, Going Medieval has a launch date locked in, and Sherman Commander has a demo you should probably check out. Here’s everything worth knowing from the past few days. Railroad Corporation...
Red Storm Entertainment was founded by Tom Clancy and Doug Littlejohn in 1996 in Morrisville, North Carolina, with the intent to develop games that reflected the same techno-thriller sensibility as Clancy’s novels. Its early output included the tactical shooter Rainbow Six in 1998, which became the studio’s best-known work. ruthless.com...
If you believe the data, there are 803 strategy games on Nextfest this time around, a huge mix of vapourware, vertical slices, concepts and AI generated crud. But somewhere in that festering pot are some gems worth getting excited about. Because I’m a good guy I’ve cut through the trash...
Ashes of the Singularity II has a substantial demo live on Steam for the duration of Next Fest. The demo gives you two of the three playable factions, the United Earth Forces and the Post-Human Coalition, in skirmish mode against AI or full multiplayer for up to 8 players with...
Last month, on eXplorminate.org, Andy asked what we understood by the terms theme, mechanics and gameplay loop. Not being one to ignore an easy (easy!?) question, let’s take a look at the terms we use and, importantly, what we think they mean. Theme This is a slippery one. When someone...
On the last episode of Critical Moves, Joe did something unforgivable. He talked me into a bet. If you listened all the way to the end, you’ll already know what’s coming. For everyone else, here’s the moment in full: Joe: No Al, play Terra Invicta. Al: We’re going to play...
There’s a particular kind of indie game project that you come across occasionally. One where the ambition clearly outpaced the resources for a long time, but where the team kept building the world anyway, long before a single line of game code was written. Rezium is that kind of project....
Bulwark Studios is a small developer based in Angoulême, France. Mechanicus was announced on February 21, 2018 and released on November 15 of that year for Windows, Linux, and macOS, published by Kasedo Games. Console ports to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch arrived on July 17, 2020, handled...
Civilization VI was developed by the same Firaxis team that had built the Civilization V expansions Gods and Kings and Brave New World. Lead designer Ed Beach, lead producer Dennis Shirk, and art director Brian Busatti all carried over from that work. The 25th anniversary of the franchise was cited...
Anno 2205 was released on November 3, 2015, the sixth entry in Blue Byte’s city-building series and the second consecutive game to move the setting into the future. Anno 2070 had received critical acclaim four years earlier while taking the series into near-future ecological crisis territory. Blue Byte’s stated intent...
4th Generation Warfare is Eversim’s attempt to simulate the messy reality of modern statecraft where conventional military operations are just one tool among many. The game positions you as a head of state managing a team of specialists—diplomats, spies, hackers, investigators—across a globe rendered in both 2D strategic views and...
Battlesector is one of my favourite Warhammer games. I’ve always preferred the action of real-time to the thinking behind turn-based, but this game is fast paced (for a turn-based tactics...
Speed Freeks is a multiplayer-only vehicle combat game set in the Warhammer 40K universe, built around the Orks and their obsession with speed, dakka, and barely functional mechanics. It mixes...
Block Fortress 2 hits you with a strange mix of nostalgia and ambition. It’s the kind of game that feels like a long-lost favourite from your teenage years—but it’s also...
Wargaming.net had a problem with names. Their first game was called Massive Assault. The follow-up was Massive Assault Network. The third entry, released in 2005, was called Domination. If you...
By 2003, Koei had been making Romance of the Three Kingdoms games for eighteen years. The series had shipped eight entries by that point, each one iterating on the same...
Medieval II: Total War arrived in November 2006 as something the series hadn’t produced before and hasn’t quite managed since: a game where everything worked at the same time. Creative...
Star Wars: Rebellion won GameSpot’s Most Disappointing Game of 1998. That’s not a great starting point for a retrospective, but it’s an honest one, and it explains a lot about...
Jake Solomon had been trying to make this game for nine years before it shipped. He joined Firaxis in the late 1990s as a fan of the original X-COM: UFO...
Dragon Force has a stranger origin story than the game itself lets on. Development began at J-Force, a studio founded by former Wolf Team developers, under producer Masahiro Akishino. Then...
Tim Wisseman was working as a lumberjack in the mountains near Bass Lake, California when VGA Planets took off. He’d been writing multiplayer space games since 1983, starting with a...
The 5-Star General series existed because Panzer General (1994) sold better than SSI expected and spawned a production line. Allied General covered the Allied perspective in Europe. Fantasy General transplanted...
Westwood Studios closed on March 31, 2003. Command & Conquer: Generals had shipped on February 11. The studio that built the franchise was being dismantled while its last spiritual product...
Brian Reynolds joined MicroProse in 1991 as a programmer on graphic adventure games. Colonization started as something he worked on when he had spare time, drawing on Civilization’s core mechanics...
Before Rome: Total War released in September 2004, Creative Assembly licensed a preliminary version of its new engine to the BBC and the History Channel. The BBC used it for...
Bruce Shelley left MicroProse at the end of 1992 after co-designing Railroad Tycoon and Civilization with Sid Meier. In 1995, Tony Goodman – an old friend from a board game...
The Axis & Allies board game existed in two rule editions when Hasbro Interactive and MicroProse released the PC version in September 1998. The third edition of the rules –...
Hubert Cater began development on the Strategic Command series in 1999 with a specific gap in mind. Grand strategy WWII games on PC at the time split into two groups:...
The world of strategy games is deeply intertwined with human history. These games often draw on historical events, offering players a chance to engage with and even reshape the past....
Chris Taylor left Cavedog Entertainment in 1998, founded Gas Powered Games in Seattle, and spent the next several years making Dungeon Siege before returning to the genre he was known...
The modding community has played a crucial role in extending the lifespan and enhancing the experience of Rome: Total War. Over the years, numerous mods have been created that add...
Electronic Arts split EA Los Angeles into two studios in 2010. One half became Danger Close, which went on to make Medal of Honor: Warfighter and subsequently get closed in...
In 1991, Julian Gollop and his brother Nick ran a small British developer called Mythos Games. Their previous title, Laser Squad, was a turn-based tactical game with a dedicated following,...
By 1999 MicroProse was operating in a different shape than the company that had published Civilization and Master of Orion. The Spectrum HoloByte acquisition in 1993 had restructured the business...
In 1996, Spectrum HoloByte consolidated its MicroProse acquisition by moving the studio from Maryland to California, laying off staff in the process. The new management and the existing team did...
By 1999, SSI had already released two games under the Warhammer 40,000 licence. Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000 in 1997 adapted the Epic tabletop system, fielding armies at a scale...
Nival Interactive was a Moscow-based studio founded in 1996 by Sergey Orlovskiy, known at the time primarily for the Allods series and the real-time tactics game Blitzkrieg. Development on Silent...
Bullfrog Productions was founded in 1987 by Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar in Guildford, and by the mid-1990s had produced Populous, Theme Park, and Magic Carpet. Molyneux came up with...
Alien Legacy was developed by Ybarra Productions and published by Sierra On-Line on May 14 1994 for MS-DOS. The developer credit belongs to Joe Ybarra, a Sierra producer who built...
The term “4X” did not exist before Master of Orion. Alan Emrich coined it in a September 1993 preview for Computer Gaming World, using it to describe a game that...
Andrew Ackermann announced Star Ruler on 5 July 2009, in the community forums for the Irrlicht open-source game engine. The post was the first public record of Blind Mind Studios,...
Few concepts capture the essence of the modern world as effectively as globalism. In the latter half of the 20th century, it emerged as the transformative force that truly connected...
Archon: The Light and the Dark, released by Electronic Arts in 1983, established a template that was straightforward to describe and difficult to improve upon: two players manoeuvre pieces across...
The Second World War was arguably one of the most horrific events in human history. It claimed the highest death toll of any war and its unprecedented scale overshadowed all...