The Top Ten Strategy Games at Nextfest

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 to bring the best of Nextfest.

You can thank me by joining the Discord or, if you’re old school like me, joining the forum.

Here’s the list:

10. Astra Sentinel

Astra Sentinel is a wave-based survival RTS from Somnambulist Games where alien hordes assault your planets in escalating waves while you build, expand, and try not to get overrun. You must manage both planetary surface construction and space combat simultaneously, switching between views without loading screens. There’s a 26-level survival mode with persistent progression that unlocks new units over time, plus a handcrafted story campaign with distinct mission objectives and some narrative running through it.

The strategic loop is straightforward: expand your territory to grow production, fortify what you hold, and respond to the constant pressure on multiple fronts at once. Every planet you take is another front to defend, and a single breach can cascade quickly. The pause system gives you room to manage that complexity without it turning into a firefighting exercise.

It’s a small indie title and the demo has had crash issues, which is worth knowing before you commit time to it. But the scope is larger than most wave-defence games attempt, and the combination of surface building and space combat gives it something to work with. If the concept sounds good, give the updated Nextfest demo a look.

9. Atre: Dominance Wars

Atre: Dominance Wars is a 4X/RTS hybrid from Ironward with god-game mechanics layered on top. You play as an immortal sorcerer, an Elder, in a procedurally generated world being torn apart by a cataclysm called The Merge, which randomly splices four dimensions together as you play. You build cities, research unit mutations, forge artefacts, manage diplomacy, and work toward ascending to godhood, at which point you get access to spells that can physically reshape or destroy territory. The game cites Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders, and Stellaris as its main reference points, which tells you roughly what you’re in for.

It’s a small team, Kickstarter-funded, and was pushed back from 2025 to Q2 2026 because it needed more polish. The demo covers a prologue that gives you a taste of the core loop. Some players have reported serious CPU performance issues even on capable hardware, so go in with that in mind.

The combination of 4X empire building, real-time combat, and god-game powers is an ambitious design for an indie studio, and not everything is fully implemented yet. But the procedural world generation and the escalating power curve toward godhood give it a different feel to most strategy games in this fest. If you’ve ever wanted HoMM’s hero-led army command wrapped in a proper 4X structure, this is worth a look.

8. Here Comes The Swarm

Here Comes The Swarm is a survival RTS from CableHook Games where you’re building and defending settlements on the planet Ulora against a planet-consuming hive mind. The tactical pause is central to how the game works. You can stop time at any point to issue orders, reposition units, and plan construction, then let it run. The Swarm attacks in massive waves and doesn’t stop coming, so preparation between assaults is where most of the strategic work happens. There’s also an expedition system that lets you push beyond your walls and take the fight directly to the hive.

The roguelite structure adds deity alignment, choose between Tiamman or Karkadann to unlock different powers, along with Essences, Blessings, and Burdens that vary between runs. It’s launching into Steam Early Access on March 5th, which means the Nextfest demo is essentially a preview of a game that’s almost out. CableHook has been explicit about building the full release around community feedback, which is either reassuring or a warning sign depending on your experience with Early Access titles.

The demo has been updated with new content for Nextfest and the reception so far has been strongly positive. If They Are Billions scratched an itch but you wanted more control over the pace of play, this is the closest thing to it currently in active development. Worth checking before it hits Early Access next week.

7. Repterra

Repterra is a base-building survival RTS from Chute Apps, now published by MicroProse, set in an alternate timeline where dinosaurs escaped captivity in the 1990s and collapsed global civilisation. You build sprawling colonies, establish production networks, and defend against dinosaur hordes while simultaneously taming, breeding, and riding dinosaurs yourself. The breeding system lets you experiment with genetic mutations to create hybrid species with enhanced traits, and human units can mount certain dinosaurs to unlock abilities neither can access alone. The devs claim up to 100,000 dinosaurs on screen simultaneously at 60fps, which is either impressive engineering or impressive marketing depending on how the full release plays.

The game draws obvious comparisons to They Are Billions and Age of Darkness. Base defence against relentless waves, permanent upgrades between runs, escalating difficulty, but the dinosaur mechanics give it a distinct identity. Five factions are planned for the full release, each with different unit rosters and strategic emphases, ranging from raw combat power to resource management and dinosaur taming specialisation. The demo currently has three factions available.

MicroProse picking this up as publisher is a decent signal as they’ve consistently backed interesting strategy titles rather than just anything that comes through the door. The demo has a 100% positive review score on Steam from 56 reviews. This is a small sample but shouldn’t be dismissed. If the dinosaur angle sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is, but the underlying RTS structure is solid enough to take seriously.

6. Twilight Imperium Digital

Twilight Imperium Digital is the official PC adaptation of Fantasy Flight’s legendary board game 4X, developed by Red Square Games. If you don’t know the tabletop original, it’s one of the most complex and celebrated 4X designs ever made: galactic conquest across seventeen factions, each with asymmetric abilities, combined with a political layer where players vote on laws that affect everyone, trade negotiations, and backstabbing diplomacy that can unravel a winning position in a single round. The digital version carries all of that over with full AI opponents, single-player, and multiplayer support.

The board game is notorious for sessions that run six to eight hours with the right group, which has always been its biggest barrier to entry. The digital version removes the setup time, the rules disputes, and the problem of finding five other people willing to clear their Saturday. The AI opponents are designed to replicate the distinct faction personalities and political behaviour that make the tabletop game work.

Twilight Imperium has a devoted following for good reason. There is nothing else that replicates what it does at the tabletop, and a competent digital adaptation has been a long time coming. The demo is live now. If you’ve never played the board game, this is the easiest entry point you’re going to get. If you have, you already know that you need this.

5. Tabletop Tavern

Tabletop Tavern is an RTS/roguelite from Memori Studios set on a fantasy battlefield where you recruit mercenaries and fight through a campaign that generates new encounters, gear, and upgrades each run. The combat system is built around positioning and terrain with spear walls to counter cavalry, archer placement, chokepoints at river crossings and forest edges, and high ground advantages. Fights scale from small skirmishes up to large engagements with hundreds of units on screen, and the permanent unlock system means each run leaves you with something to work with next time.

The roguelite structure gives you hero units with customisable loadouts alongside your regular roster, and faction choices shift your strategic emphasis between different playstyles. The scaling difficulty and random encounters are designed to keep the decision-making fresh across multiple runs rather than letting you settle into a single optimal strategy. It’s squarely aimed at players who want RTS mechanics without the game turning into a speed competition.

The developer is Termaine Jenkins under the Memori Studios label, which is a small operation, and the game is targeting Q1 2026. The demo is live now for Nextfest. The concept isn’t breaking new ground but the execution in the demo is clean and the combat feedback is satisfying. If roguelite structure appeals to you and you want something that rewards tactical thinking over mechanical speed, give it a look.

4. Sudden Strike 5

Sudden Strike 5 is the fifth entry in Kalypso and Kite Games’ long-running WWII real-time tactics series, arriving nearly a decade after Sudden Strike 4. It’s pure tactical combat. There’s no base building, no resource gathering, no production queues. You get a set of units, a historical battlefield, and an objective. How you get there is up to you. The full release promises 25 missions across three faction campaigns covering Western Allies, Soviets, and Axis forces, with battlefields spanning Europe and North Africa. Over 300 units are in the roster, split between 190 vehicles and 110 infantry types, and customisable commanders add passive bonuses that let you tailor your approach before a mission starts.

The tactical options are built around the series’ traditional strengths. Flanking armour, using terrain for cover, managing supply lines, capturing key positions to call in reinforcements, and destroying infrastructure to slow the enemy down. The game rewards positioning and timing over raw firepower, which has always been what separates Sudden Strike from the more casual end of the WWII RTS market. The demo has two missions available: Attack on Monte Cassino playing as Western Allies, and Defence of Sevastopol as the Soviets.

The gap since Sudden Strike 4 is worth acknowledging. That game launched in reasonable shape and then spent years accumulating DLC, but it never fully escaped its technical limitations and the AI had well-documented problems. Whether Kite Games has addressed those fundamentals in the sequel is the question the demo needs to answer. The production values look noticeably improved based on what’s been shown, and the unit count is the highest in the series to date.

Sudden Strike has always occupied an interesting middle ground between approachable WWII tactics and something with genuine strategic depth, and there isn’t much competition in that space. The demo is live now. Kalypso are also streaming it live on their YouTube channel if you want to see it played before you commit time to it yourself.

3. Ashes of the Singularity II

Ashes of the Singularity II is the sequel to Stardock and Oxide Games’ 2016 massive-scale RTS, a game that was more benchmark tool than commercial success but was technically remarkable for its time. The original ran on Oxide’s Nitrous engine, which was purpose-built to handle thousands of simultaneous units across continent-sized maps by distributing the workload across multiple CPU cores. The sequel does the same thing with ten years of additional development behind it, and adds a third faction, the United Earth Forces, representing humanity, alongside the returning Post-Human Coalition and the AI Substrate. The setting is 2031, the campaign puts you in command of the UEF fighting to reclaim Earth from two technologically superior enemies, and the multiplayer supports up to eight players in both competitive and cooperative modes.

The design philosophy is explicitly anti-micromanagement. Armies are grouped into larger formations that move and fight with a degree of autonomy, base management is handled at a regional level rather than building by building, and success comes from logistics, positioning, and understanding how your faction’s strengths match up against the enemy’s. The Post-Human Coalition fields mechs and energy weapons, the UEF relies on numbers and conventional firepower, and the Substrate brings the mechanical drone swarms that defined the original game. Each faction plays differently enough that switching between them changes how you approach the strategic layer.

The Next Fest demo is fully featured. There are two factions, seven difficulty levels from Trainee to General, full skirmish mode, and eight-player multiplayer. Stardock have been transparent about where the game currently sits in development, and the demo reflects an early but functional state. Performance on older hardware has been flagged by some players as an issue, which is worth knowing given the engine’s demands. Procedural maps are locked to the full release, so the demo runs on fixed layouts only.

The original Ashes of the Singularity found a dedicated audience among players who missed the Supreme Commander era of large-scale RTS design, and the sequel is clearly aimed squarely at the same crowd. There is a genuine gap in the market for a modern RTS that operates at this scale without collapsing into micromanagement, and nothing else currently in development is attempting it at quite this level. Stardock and Oxide know exactly what they’re building and who they’re building it for. The demo is live now.

2. Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes

Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes is a tactical roguelite from Alt Shift, the French studio behind Crying Suns, published by Dotemu. It’s set during the second Cylon War, specifically in the chaos immediately following the fall of the Twelve Colonies, and you play as a Gunstar Captain commanding a small fleet of survivors trying to reach Admiral Adama and the Galactica. The Cylons are behind you, resources are running out, and every jump takes you somewhere new with its own set of problems. The core gameplay loop is fleet management between engagements combined with real-time-with-pause space combat where you deploy Vipers and Raptors, manage damage, and hold the line long enough to jump again.

The combat system is built around the show’s central survival concept: resist until you can jump. You’re almost always outnumbered and outgunned, so the tactical question is how much damage you’re willing to absorb before pulling out. Between fights you’re managing the fleet’s resources, handling crew disputes and faction tensions aboard your ships, and dealing with the constant threat of Cylon infiltrators. Events are procedurally generated and narratively driven, meaning the story that emerges from each run is different. Alt Shift built Crying Suns on the same structural foundation and it worked well there; Scattered Hopes has more production behind it and a stronger licence to work with.

The presentation is exceptional. Bear McCreary’s soundtrack is licensed and used throughout, the visual style faithfully reproduces the show’s aesthetic down to the corner-cut paper and the landline phones, and there’s a version of the series’ opening sequence built into the game. Alt Shift have clearly understood what made the show work, the desperate, grinding pressure of survival against an overwhelming enemy, and built the mechanics around it instead of attaching the licence to a generic strategy game. The demo has been available since earlier this year and has been updated for Next Fest with new content and improvements.

Battlestar Galactica has had a complicated history with video games. The reimagined show ran from 2004 to 2009 and was one of the best sci-fi television series ever made, but the games that came out alongside it were mostly forgettable. Deadlock in 2017 was the first one that did something worthwhile with the licence, and Scattered Hopes looks like it might be the second. The full game is targeted for Spring 2026. If you have any affection for the source material at all, the demo is not optional.

All the games above have merit. They each bring something to the table, be it a licence done justice, a familiar genre executed well, or a scale of combat most developers wouldn’t attempt. But the number one slot is reserved for something special. It’s different in the sense that there isn’t really another game you can point to and say ‘it’s like that.’ The closest comparison is Hearts of Iron 4’s frontline system, but that’s a grand strategy game where the operational layer is one abstraction among many. The final game on our list puts you at that layer and makes it the entire game. That’s a genuinely unusual design decision and Slitherine don’t back unusual design decisions unless they believe in them.

1. Battleplan

Battleplan is a WW2 operational RTS from Foolish Mortals Games, published by Slitherine, and it is the most interesting strategy game in this Nextfest by a significant margin. The concept is straightforward to describe but difficult to find precedent for: you command at division level across battlefields built from real-world geographic data, issuing orders by drawing directly on the map. Draw lines for defensive positions, arrows for axes of advance, shapes for objectives, exactly as a real commander would work at a planning table. Your officers receive those orders and execute them autonomously, managing the tactical layer themselves while you focus on the operational picture. You are not controlling individual units. You are running a battle.

The scale is worth spelling out. Battleplan simulates month-long operations second by second, with hundreds of thousands of troops represented on screen. Battles like Operation Veritable, the Allied push through the Rhineland in early 1945, are recreated using actual terrain data, with the same swamps, forests, and chokepoints that shaped the real campaign. You plan around that terrain the way the real commanders had to. Minefields have strength percentages that reflect how long your engineers spent laying them. Supply lines need protecting. Artillery and air support need coordinating. The logistics layer is not cosmetic.

The officer system adds a personnel management dimension that most RTS games ignore entirely. Every officer starts with a random skill and earns additional skills through combat experience, drawn from a skill web that branches across infantry, armour, artillery, air support, and general command abilities. Officers pass their stat bonuses down through the entire chain of command beneath them, which means a highly experienced divisional commander has a measurable impact on every unit under his control. Lose that officer and you feel it. The chain of command is a strategic resource rather than an organisational chart.

Foolish Mortals Games is a small studio with a history of making unconventional games. Radio General put you in command through voice orders, Kaiju Wars was a turn-based game about giant monster attacks on cities. Neither of those was a conventional RTS and neither is this. The studio tends to build systems that model a specific experience rather than borrowing from existing genre templates, and Battleplan reflects that approach. Slitherine as publisher brings wargame credibility. They know this audience and they know how to support a game like this through development and beyond.

The demo is live now as part of Nextfest, running until March 2nd. Slitherine also streamed a developer showcase on their YouTube and Twitch channels if you want context before jumping in. This is the game in this fest that has the most potential to be significant for the strategy genre. Not because it reinvents RTS mechanics, but because it applies serious simulation thinking to a scale of warfare that most RTS games treat as wallpaper. If you have any interest in operational-level WW2 command at all, this is not a game you skip.

There’s likely something I missed. I’m just one strategy game fan wading through the quagmire that is Steam Nextfest. Kriegsspiel: 7 Years War didn’t make the list, neither did Frostveil: The Last Winter, despite being an intimate Frostpunk-like. WARSHIFT 2’s unique mix of Action, RTS and RPG gameplay wasn’t enough to crack the top ten. What did I miss? Come and tell me on the Discord or the forum.