Critical Moves hosts Al and Nuno welcome new team member Adam to explore the strategy gaming offerings from Steam’s recent Next Fest, discovering everything from promising indie titles and innovative mechanics to one of the most embarrassingly bad games ever released on the platform, complete with Brazilian Batman and other AI-generated horrors.
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This episode showcases the diverse landscape of strategy gaming through Steam Next Fest demos, featuring detailed discussions of promising titles like the ultra-realistic naval combat simulator Task Force Admiral, innovative city builders with mythical beasts, and unique base management games with creative twists. The hosts examine both the technical achievements of passionate indie developers and the spectacular failures of AI-generated cash grabs that somehow made it onto Steam. Adam’s debut brings fresh perspectives on complex simulation games, while the team’s discovery of New World Order: Anarchy Collapsed provides unintentional comedy gold with its carnival kingpin Brazilian Batman and other bizarre AI-created characters. The conversation explores what makes strategy games compelling versus exploitative, examining everything from deep management simulations to accessible colony builders.
Critical Moves Podcast – Episode 19 Show Notes
Episode Title: The Best and Worst of Steam Next Fest
Hosts: Al, Nuno, Adam (debut appearance)
Episode Length: ~54 minutes
Episode Summary
The team explores Steam Next Fest’s strategy game offerings with new member Adam making his podcast debut. The discussion ranges from genuinely impressive indie developments like Task Force Admiral’s ultra-realistic World War II naval combat to accessible city builders like Roman Triumph, before culminating in the discovery of New World Order: Anarchy Collapsed – a spectacularly bad AI-generated disaster featuring Brazilian Batman and other absurd characters. Adam’s fresh perspective on complex simulation games balances Nuno’s enthusiasm for detailed military simulations and Al’s preference for accessible gameplay, creating engaging discussions about what makes strategy games worth playing versus obvious cash grabs.
Welcome Adam!
New Team Member Introduction
Adam joins as the team’s newest member, bringing expertise in niche and obscure strategy titles that appeal to dedicated audiences rather than mainstream players. His background in complex simulation games and willingness to tackle challenging mechanics adds a new dimension to the podcast’s coverage of strategy gaming.
The introduction establishes Adam’s role as someone who appreciates games that require significant time investment to understand, positioning him as the team member most likely to explore titles that others might find too complex or intimidating. This perspective proves valuable throughout the episode as he tackles games that demand patience and dedication.
Team Dynamic and Expectations
Al’s playful warning about Adam’s performance determining his future appearances creates a light-hearted but competitive atmosphere that encourages thoughtful game analysis. This pressure-free environment allows Adam to share honest opinions without feeling obligated to praise everything he encounters.
The multinational team composition – with members from different countries discussing games in English – occasionally creates communication challenges but also brings diverse cultural perspectives to strategy gaming analysis. These minor miscommunications actually enhance the authentic feel of the discussions.
Starless Abyss: Mixing Successful Formulas
Genre Fusion Innovation
Adam’s opening pick demonstrates how successful indie games often combine proven mechanics from established titles rather than attempting completely original approaches. Starless Abyss merges FTL’s ship management, Slay the Spire’s deck-building mechanics, and Into the Breach’s tactical positioning to create something familiar yet distinct.
The Warhammer-inspired art style provides immediate visual appeal while the chaos-themed setting justifies the game’s darker tone and challenging mechanics. This combination of recognizable visual themes with innovative gameplay fusion represents a smart approach to indie development that leverages existing player familiarity.
Tactical Deck Building Complexity
The game’s use of cards to control tactical grid-based combat creates interesting decision layers where players must consider both resource management and battlefield positioning simultaneously. This dual-focus gameplay requires strategic thinking about deck composition alongside tactical awareness of unit positioning and enemy movement patterns.
Adam’s appreciation for games where “every move has meaning” reflects the appeal of carefully designed systems that reward thoughtful play over random button pressing. The emphasis on enemy design quality suggests attention to creating meaningful challenges rather than arbitrary difficulty spikes.
Task Force Admiral: Ultra-Realistic Naval Combat
Unprecedented Simulation Depth
Nuno’s extensive praise for Task Force Admiral reflects his passion for games that prioritize historical accuracy and tactical realism over accessibility concerns. The game’s one-to-one scale representation of Pacific Theatre carrier battles creates the sense of scale that many strategy games promise but fail to deliver.
The three-person development team’s achievement in creating what feels like a next-generation war game demonstrates how passionate developers can accomplish what larger studios with bigger budgets often cannot. This David versus Goliath narrative appeals to players who value innovation over marketing budgets.
Real-Time Strategic Complexity
The game’s real-time nature combined with its emphasis on planning and scheduling creates a unique gameplay experience where players must think multiple moves ahead while managing ongoing operations. The 45-minute aircraft preparation time mentioned by Nuno illustrates how the game forces players to consider the temporal aspects of military operations.
The cat-and-mouse dynamics between carrier task forces, where information gathering and strike timing determine victory, captures the strategic essence of Pacific naval warfare better than abstract turn-based systems. This emphasis on reconnaissance and timing over pure resource management distinguishes the game from typical strategy titles.
Technical Achievement and Visual Fidelity
Nuno’s description of individual aircraft physics and detailed animation systems demonstrates technical achievement that rivals AAA productions despite the tiny development team. The ability to follow individual planes through combat while maintaining strategic-level awareness showcases sophisticated programming and design coordination.
The game’s combination of tactical depth with accessible controls addresses a common problem in military simulations where complexity often comes at the cost of playability. The simple UI that doesn’t require extensive tutorial investment represents smart design that prioritizes gameplay over showing off technical complexity.
Orbi Universo 2: Deep Management Simulation
Complexity as a Feature
Adam’s honest admission that he felt “too stupid” to understand Orbi Universo 2 after two hours highlights how some games deliberately target players willing to invest significant time in learning complex systems. This self-selection creates dedicated audiences who appreciate depth over accessibility.
The comparison to Democracy games and Paradox titles suggests a subgenre of strategy games where understanding mechanics becomes part of the entertainment rather than an obstacle to fun. These games appeal to players who enjoy the discovery process of figuring out how systems interact and influence each other.
Learning Curve Philosophy
Adam’s description of the game being “about the discovery of mechanics and understanding them” rather than traditional gameplay reflects a different approach to strategy gaming where intellectual challenge takes precedence over immediate gratification. This design philosophy creates polarizing experiences that players either love or abandon.
The acknowledgment that there might be someone who considers it “the best game in the world” demonstrates awareness that niche games can have passionate advocates even when they don’t appeal to broader audiences. This acceptance of diverse preferences shows mature understanding of strategy gaming’s varied appeal.
Roman Triumph: Accessible Colony Building
Resource Management Innovation
Al’s excitement about Roman Triumph’s job priority system demonstrates appreciation for mechanics that make resource management more transparent and controllable. The drag-and-drop priority queue addresses a common frustration in city builders where players struggle to direct limited populations toward urgent tasks.
The Roman setting provides familiar historical context that makes the game’s mechanics more intuitive than abstract sci-fi or fantasy settings. Players can easily understand why certain buildings and resources matter within the context of establishing Roman settlements in barbarian territories.
Balancing Accessibility with Depth
The game’s tutorial system that guides players through specific tasks while allowing experimentation represents effective onboarding that doesn’t overwhelm new players. Al’s appreciation for games that don’t require manual reading reflects modern expectations for intuitive design and clear communication.
The inclusion of mythical beasts alongside realistic settlement management creates an interesting tension between historical authenticity and fantasy elements. This combination potentially broadens appeal by offering both educational and fantastical elements within the same experience.
Combat Integration and Difficulty Options
The survival elements and combat encounters provide external pressure that prevents the game from becoming a peaceful sandbox, forcing players to balance growth with defence preparation. The multiple difficulty settings ensure accessibility for players who prefer different challenge levels.
Al’s comparison to Manor Lords and other colony simulators where combat exists but doesn’t dominate gameplay suggests a successful balance between different game systems. This approach satisfies players who want military challenges without overwhelming those who prefer city-building focus.
The King is Watching: Innovative Base Management
Creative Core Mechanic
Adam’s enthusiasm for The King is Watching centres on its creative interpretation of attention and management limitations. The concept that workers only function when observed by the king creates immediate thematic coherence between gameplay mechanics and narrative premise.
The spatial limitation system where players must choose which buildings receive royal attention forces meaningful decisions about resource allocation and timing. This constraint-based design creates natural tension without relying on artificial difficulty or overwhelming complexity.
Roguelike Integration
The randomized building cards add replayability while maintaining strategic depth, requiring players to adapt their plans based on available options rather than following predetermined optimal strategies. This flexibility prevents the game from becoming a solved puzzle while rewarding players who understand underlying principles.
The progression from cosy early gameplay to frantic late-game management creates a satisfying difficulty curve that eases players into complexity rather than overwhelming them immediately. This pacing keeps players engaged while gradually introducing new challenges and decision points.
New World Order: Anarchy Collapsed – A Spectacular Failure
AI-Generated Disaster
Al’s visceral reaction to New World Order represents frustration with low-effort cash grabs that exploit Steam’s relatively open marketplace. The obvious use of AI-generated art and writing demonstrates how automated content creation can produce technically functional but artistically bankrupt products.
The Brazilian Batman (Carnival Kingpin) and other absurd character designs reveal the limitations of AI content generation when not supervised by humans with actual creative vision or cultural understanding. These bizarre creations become unintentionally comedic rather than engaging or threatening.
False Advertising and Quality Control
The game’s grand strategy description promising world domination and alien invasion creates expectations that the actual map-painting gameplay cannot possibly fulfil. This disconnect between marketing promises and delivered experience represents deceptive business practices that exploit consumer trust.
Al’s discovery that the game appears similar to Civilization 7 in Steam’s recommendation system highlights problems with algorithmic categorization that fails to distinguish between quality products and obvious scams. This technical failure enables consumer confusion and potential purchasing mistakes.
Steam Platform Issues
The discussion of Steam’s apparent lack of quality control raises important questions about platform responsibility for vetting products before allowing sales. The existence of obviously broken or scam products undermines consumer confidence in the platform’s curation capabilities.
The team’s suggestion that players should try the demo to experience its awfulness first-hand demonstrates how terrible games can become entertainment in their own right, though this doesn’t excuse the exploitation of unsuspecting consumers who might actually purchase such products.
Industry Trends and Development Insights
Indie Innovation vs. Corporate Laziness
The episode’s range from passionate indie projects like Task Force Admiral to AI-generated cash grabs like New World Order illustrates the extreme diversity of modern game development. Small teams with vision and dedication often produce more innovative and satisfying experiences than large corporations focused primarily on profit extraction.
The Microprose publishing discussion reveals how specialized publishers can support niche titles that mainstream companies might consider too risky. This publishing model enables creative projects that serve dedicated audiences rather than chasing mass market appeal.
Accessibility vs. Complexity Debate
The team’s varying reactions to complex games like Orbi Universo 2 versus accessible titles like Roman Triumph demonstrates how different players value different aspects of strategy gaming. Some appreciate deep systems that reward extensive study, while others prefer immediate engagement and clear progression.
This diversity of preferences suggests that the strategy gaming market benefits from variety rather than homogenization, with different developers serving different audience segments rather than all competing for the same mainstream market.
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Episode Verdict
This episode successfully introduces Adam as a valuable team member while showcasing the diverse quality spectrum of strategy games available through Steam Next Fest. The discussion effectively balances appreciation for innovative indie development with appropriate criticism of exploitative cash grabs, providing listeners with both recommendations for quality titles and warnings about products to avoid. Adam’s analytical approach to complex games complements the existing team dynamic, while the discovery of New World Order’s spectacular awfulness provides unintentional entertainment that highlights the importance of quality control in digital marketplaces. The episode’s strength lies in demonstrating how passionate small teams can create compelling experiences that rival AAA productions, while also exposing how automated content generation without human oversight produces laughably bad results. For strategy gaming enthusiasts, this episode offers both genuine recommendations for interesting demos and cautionary examples of what happens when profit motives completely override creative integrity.
Next Episode: Singleplayer vs Multiplayer Strategy Games: What’s Actually Better?
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