Strategy games—of all persuasions, I’m not just talking about armies on a map—aren’t usually the stars of big gaming shows, because they tend to be more sedate affairs, not well-suited to blockbuster trailers and breathless announcements. Over the last week, however, I have seen a lot of very promising ones announced (or shown in more detail), and I figured it was worth rounding them up in case many/all of them have slipped past you between all the Starfield and Star Wars news.
The glory of Rome is at your fingertips in this city-building game where you must appease the gods, enact laws, and develop complex supply chains to meet the needs of your citizens.
I love this! It ticks all my requisite city-builder boxes: cute visuals, destructive natural disasters, a cool name and vengeful gods.
The Persona 5 crew are back in yet another spin-off, only this time it’s a turn-based tactics game that looks like it owes a heavy debt to Mario + Rabbids. Not that that’s a bad thing. The art style won’t be to everyone’s taste, but hopefully Atlus can take everyone’s turn-based strengths from the main game and translate them to this particular turn-based battlefield.
Persona 5 Tactica is out on November 27 on Xbox (and Game Pass) and PC.
Here’s something new. Last Train Home is an RTS that has you playing as a team of Czech veterans of the First World War, caught up in the middle of the Russian Civil War. It’s got real-time battles and base (well, train) management. And also, by the looks of it, some fantastic FMV cutscenes as well!
If you think this looks very familiar, like a certain type of game from a certain type of studio from a certain point in time, you should know that your suspicions aren’t unfounded: Stormgate is being made by a bunch of former Blizzard developers who worked on both Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2.
It’s free-to-play, which has me pausing just a little, but the team say it’s not “pay to win”, so I guess we’ll see how that all shakes out when it’s released at some point in the next year or two.
This one isn’t an announcement, since we already knew it was coming, so think of it as more of a reinforcement with a big new trailer full of gameplay footage: the team behind two of the best real-time tactics games in the past decade are back with a third that looks set to embrace everything people have loved about the last two while also introducing pirates.
Shadow Gambit is out on PC in August.
Another one we knew was coming, but this gameplay trailer is our first good look at it in action, and I’m excited. Especially about the roads and roundabouts, which is something you don’t normally say in day-to-day life, but here we are.
Station to Station was shown off during the Wholesome Direct, and I am very into it. You build train lines, you ride the trains through dreamy little voxel-based landscapes, it all looks very relaxing. It’ll be out on PC later this year.
Again, we already knew about this game, but last week we got our first proper look at gameplay. And this one, with its focus on small-scale real-time combat, looks like it goes out to fans of the latter Dawn of War games.
There’s no release date yet, but it’ll be coming to not just PC but Xbox Series X|S and PS5 as well.
Hi, do you remember the 90s? Do you remember 90s RTS games? Do you specifically remember a certain series by Westwood that blended its famous real-time action—honed in Command & Conquer—with an alternate-history retelling of the Cold War?
From the visuals to the guitars this is that game, just made in 2023 and without the rights. It’s coming to PC, with no release date announced.
That’s it for everything I saw and got even a little excited about. If you caught something I might have missed, let me know!
Kotaku is covering everything Summer Game Fest, from the main show on Thursday to other events happening throughout the next week. Whether you’re into larger-than-life triple-A games or intimate, offbeat indies, you can keep up with all things SGF here.
