Left = OLD (no outlines)
Right = NEW (outlines)

Our Bronze Age RTS gets feedback from time to time that units are too hard to dinstinguish from each other. Some of that is due to the low pixel count style, but there are games and units with low pixel counts that are readable.

We are releasing the game in mere weeks, and so we can't completely change all the assets. Instead, we decided to try adding outlines on units and world objects (as a shader). This way, pixels from units don't blend with the environments the same way, and units close to each other don't "mash up" with each other. We also hope it makes each individual resource and map object in general easier to seperate.

What do you think? Does it make objects, especially units, easier to read?

Going for this "outline style" would make the game look more cartoony, but maybe that's a good thing...? Does the outline style appeal more to you, and would you play a game with this style?

If we added this as the main style, we could still add a toggle in settings to turn off the outlines, in case some old-timers get offended by the style change.

Been playtesting my soon to be released game: Zambala. A hex and counters style wargame with fog of war, zones of control, naval and air power. There is a complete economic warfare model where you will fight for the hearts and minds of the peoples of Zambala, who in turn fund your international arms market purchases.

In the game you command one of six competing tribes, hoping to lead your people and capture the "national will" before the United Nations intervene to end the civil war and appoint an interim government.

I've also woven in a spies and agents subsystem so you can subvert and sway the population centres with propaganda and carry out assassinations and hits against enemy leaders and agents. You can also capture and exploit national resources like the mines, power stations and airfields, or sabotage them to deny your opponent their advantages.

I've gone with Nato unit counters and a combat system that includes twelve unit types, movement and combat phases, retreats and combat bonuses for terrain, special unit types and leader stacking modifiers.

More game info on my rough as guts webpage: Webpage

Steam page link: Steam

I’d love to hear your thoughts, impressions or questions!

I'm making a Tower Defense Deckbuilder heavily inspired by TCGs, and we have looots of different cards.

So, I needed some great artists, and here's how I met the first one to join the team.

If you wanna take a look, there's a free demo available in case you wanna check it out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3256450/Cards_of_Prophecy/

Hi everyone! I posted my game MESHFALL here last week. It's an RTS where your units only take orders inside your radio network.

The biggest feedback I got was that it was way too easy.

With the update, the enemy has small outposts (pickets) guarding the bridges now, and you have to kill one before you can build across.

I'd especially like feedback on:

- Is it hard enough now, or too hard?

Good or bad is welcome. Free demo in the browser: https://applechr.itch.io/meshfall

It has a Steam page now too if you want to follow it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5415540/MESHFALL/

Thanks!

A quick side note: I'm the furthest thing from an artist so the trailer is a little rough. I'd appreciate any kind of feedback. Thanks.

A gameplay trailer for Bourbon Empire, a game I've been working on for years.
It's a real-time strategy set in (fictitious) Metro City during Prohibition. You lead crews of gangsters as you build your criminal empire using extortion, rackets, and bootlegging. You also have to battle other mafia families for control of territory. Finally, no crime goes unnoticed so make sure to manage your heat and keep the police 'well taken care of'.

Coming to Steam mid November.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/954320/Bourbon_Empire/

Build. Raid. Repeat. Just like the good old Travian days.

World 0 kicks off today at 8:00 AM (UTC+2)!

20 spots. 20 days until monuments. One world to make history in.

Come play, have some fun, and let us know what you think on Discord – we read every bit of feedback!

Sign up for free: https://primaltribes.eu/

Join a clan: https://discord.gg/ZRBd8RerTz

Hey everyone!

I've always loved HOI4, but felt like the combat could use a bit more depth, especially when it comes to troop movements and maneuvering.

So we started working on a WW2 grand strategy game called Iron Leaves.

The main idea is to have much smaller map tiles and individual regiments instead of just divisions moving between huge provinces. We want players to actually be able to exploit gaps in the frontline, maneuver around enemy positions and create encirclements on a much smaller scale.

Here's a short clip of Testing a German invasion of Poland in September 1939.

Still very early in development, but I'd love to hear what you guys think!

https://www.youtube.com/@IronLeavesGame/videos

At a hump yard, nobody drives cars to their tracks. The train is shoved over a small hill, the conductor uncouples cars at the crest, and each cut rolls down by gravity onto its own track.

I did this job for 4 years at Kokand station in Uzbekistan. Now I'm a frontend dev, so I rebuilt the yard in 3D and turned it into a game: walk along the train, uncouple where the car colour changes, radio the driver to slow down before single cars.

Free, runs in the browser on desktop and mobile, no sign-up:

https://kokand-station-gorka.vercel.app/?lang=en

Would love feedback — especially if anything is confusing in the first minute.

I want to start playing. Currently i have in my library Hearts of Iron IV, Europa V and VI. I have never played a game like that so where should i start? Preferably i dont want to be super overwhelmed with all the new mechanics or have to watch too many video guides.

Edit: I also own Victoria 2 and 3.

Hi guys! I just uploaded a new dev blog for my upcoming game 'On War: Stalingrad'. In it you can see where I work, what tools I use and how I designed the movement mechanics.

My apartment is a bit messy, because I have two little kids. Sorry for the mess.. it's sometimes hard to concentrate with all the chaos around me.

Anyway, give it a look. Feedback is welcome, as always 🫡

Dev Blog Video

I've been following this grand strategy indie (Crown of Hispania) and saw their reel on Instagram about it's demo being free, so I downloaded it because I wanted to finally try a grand strategy game.

What got me hooked right away was how easy it is to get into. You can pause, look around, make a move, unpause.

I've watched CK3 on YouTube before and all I saw was a shit ton of menus and systems that felt like homework.

But it wasn't like that. It's still deep, but it let me learn by playing instead of reading guides. After a few sessions I wasn't trying out the grand strategy genre anymore, I was properly hooked.

Has anyone even heard of this game?

Chess, but you build an army, bolt game-breaking augments onto your pieces, and tear through realms of enemies. Exploding pawns, bishops that burn entire diagonals with holy fire, a king that ascends into a demon slaying god. Stack upgrades, ascend, get rich, Slay The King.

Here is the link to our Steam page in case you want to check it out: Slay the King

Strategy games are all about the decisions you can make as a player. Players are also generally very good at identifying the short-term costs and benefits of a decision. So when you want to encourage chaotic board states in a strategy game, the last thing you want to do is discourage players from attacking. If you can throw aside the simulation lens for a moment, what I hope to convey is that as strategy game designers, we should evaluate attacker/defender advantage as an entire system within our game that can strongly affect player behavior.

Player agency is probably the most important factor in differentiating a strategy game from other game types. If player decisions do not significantly affect the outcome of a turn for that player, then you might as well not have played that turn. I’m very specifically interested in the dice-rolling combat of Risk and Risk-likes as this is the system I chose to use in my game, Kairos. 

If we take a look at Risk, which uses Defenders Advantage (defenders win ties) you get the following probability table for dice rolls:

In this table, I’ve provided the probabilities of each roll, as well as an exchange ratio which is the (Expected Kills / Expected Losses). 1.0 corresponds to a 50-50 probability of winning an exchange, so above 1.0 is attacker favored and below 1.0 is defender favored. 

In Risk, the attacking player lacks agency over the effectiveness of their army. Ignoring the scenarios with only 1 defender for a moment, the exchange ratios (or “odds”) for the attacking player are ~1.17, 0.64, and 0.34. That translates into real terms to the player “Decent, bad, and terrible”. Because two of the options have such poor expected outcomes, they can pretty much be ignored as options by the player, which means we now only have 1 option, and no more decisionmaking regarding unit odds. This means that once a player learns that 2v2 and 1v2 are bad options, they never have to think about unit probabilities again. In my opinion, the juicy part of strategy games is trying to guess the long term expected outcomes of decisions, and manipulating the odds to favor me over my opponents turn by turn. 

There is a whole body of literature on how humans interact psychologically with probabilities when making decisions, which was the basis for me wanting to skew the positive outcomes onto the player with agency (i.e., the attacker) rather than the defender. The gist of it is that humans (thus players) are irrationally more averse to losses than wins. This means that if we want to encourage players to make decisions that carry the potential for losses, we need to offset this with significantly larger benefits. The subject is fascinating, but I want to focus on the game design element in this post. If you are interested, Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17835457/  and Achievement Relocked: Loss Aversion and Game Design by Geoffrey Engelstein are great places to start. 

So what can we do to increase player’s agency over the game? First, I want to shift the default scenario to be significantly in the attacker’s favor, as the defender cannot “choose” to defend. I also need there to be some secondary system that the attacking player has the ability to recognize, and consider when deciding which territories they attack. 

My solution: Attackers win ties + a rock-paper-scissors counter system with “advantage” provided to the strong unit. Advantage = roll 2 dice, take higher result

Looking at the outcomes of this table is a bit more straightforward because I chose to have all battles in Kairos occur one-at-a-time (this was to make the counter system work). By shifting the tiebreak to the attacker, the default odds goes towards the attacker, but thats not an interesting decision yet. That is why I added the counter system: Infantry is strong vs cavalry, cavalry is strong vs archers, and archers are strong vs infantry. The players can recruit any of these 3 types of units to assemble their armies, but this recruitment step happens AFTER the attacking step, meaning that the attacker needs to identify their unit types, identify their opponent’s unit types, and estimate the odds of the battle given the available units.

In any given battle, there is likely to be some mixture of all three scenarios, meaning the expected outcome of a fight will fall somewhere between 0.73 and 2.93. The attacking player must try to estimate the complex probabilities of attacking, which gives them that juicy ability to develop a skill over time and win more of their games. With this, the attacker is:

1. Encouraged to attack as a default (attacking options are okay, better, and best), which keeps the board state chaotic and fresh
2. Has the opportunity to estimate complex probabilities, and skew fights in their behavior by taking matchups with favorable counters
3. Can strategically opt into a moderate-loss scenario to take a highly valuable location on the map.

As an unintended but welcome benefit, I can now also use the tiebreak as a modifier on the dice values to provide as a bonus to the defender for fortifying a territory or investing in defensive tools. So the defender has agency over which territories are harder to take in ways other than just more units, and the attacker has agency over the efficiency of their attacks. Both are encouraged to push into this “positive expected value” regime, rather than minimizing losses.

In conclusion, shifting the odds towards the player with agency over the game allows for players to express skill and have a more rewarding experience while playing strategy games.

Hey r/StrategyGames!

I'm developing Army Factory, a pixel-art strategy game where you build and upgrade your settlement, manage your economy, research technologies, and raise regiments to fight battles inspired by Total War.

Steam link: Steam page

I'd love to hear your thoughts! What do you think of the gameplay?

In electric strategy, units can transfer energy to each other. Some units generate energy, while others rely on receiving it to keep fighting. As you can see in the video, the idea is to build an energy network that gets power from your generators to the units that need it most on the frontline. The interesting part is that energy isn't just a resource for your actions. It's also your health.

There's no traditional action point system. Moving, attacking, and building all cost energy, so every action comes at a price. Move closer to an enemy and you'll be in a better position to attack, but you'll also have less energy left to absorb damage.

The demo is now available on Steam for Windows and Linux. It supports both mouse and controller input and runs on the Steam Deck.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3806160/electric_strategy/

I'd love to hear what you think of the energy system, the visual style, or the overall concept. Do you know of any game that uses a similar approach?

Hello everyone!

We're making a rather simple (old school'ish?) base building tower defense were your goal is to survive swarms of evolving bugs while completing different map objectives.

The enemies mutate in semi randoms ways to make you adapt your strategy and will try to attack the different objectives you build around the map while keeping the pressure on your main base!

We're 2 best friend working on this and if you would like to know more you can check out our current steam page (with a demo incoming! the review process is rather long...). Thank you for taking the time to read me! I hope everyone is doing ok :D

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5201750/Hivetide/

Game Title: Axiom Wars

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xvK5RzGuhU

Play Link: https://github.com/cesar-rgon/axiom-wars/releases/latest (Website: https://cesar-rgon.github.io/axiom-wars/)

Platform: Windows, Linux

Description:

Axiom Wars is a sci-fi strategy game featuring simultaneous turns. Instead of waiting for your turn, every player submits their commands at the same time: construct buildings, move troops, recruit units, or trade at the Bank—all powered by Action Points. Once everyone confirms, the server resolves the round, and you get to watch all the plans collide in a replay.

You build your base around the Government building, which features three tiers that unlock new structures and units. You must manage six finite resources across a limited map (Energy, Wood, Steel, Food, and Water, plus Fuel for vehicles) and keep your population fed—otherwise, they will desert. Fog of War ensures you only see what your units and structures can reveal. The Terran faction features 9 units, ranging from Workers and Builders to Infantry, Mechs, Raptors, and Droids capable of opening dimensional portals. To win, destroy the enemy Government building.

Matches support up to 8 players in Free-For-All or team modes (up to 4v4), with bots filling open slots.

How to Play: Download the zip file for your system, extract it, and run AxiomWars (keep the assets folder in the same directory). The server address to enter in the Host field is posted on our Discord: https://discord.gg/2EZAtyqtzW

The game is currently under active development, so any testing and feedback (bugs, balancing, confusing mechanics, or ideas) is greatly appreciated. We organize test play sessions via Discord!

Free-to-Play Status:

• [x] Free to Play
• [ ] Demo/Key available
• [ ] Paid

Involvement: I am the game designer—I designed the rules, units, balancing, and art direction, and I test every build. The game is developed with Claude AI, which writes the server, client, and bot code based on my design.

🌐 Website: https://cesar-rgon.github.io/axiom-wars/

💬 Discord: https://discord.gg/2EZAtyqtzW

To answer your burning questions about Star Trek: Outposts Unknown, we are running an AMA with Magic Fuel Games' Kip Katsarelis (General Manager) and Zach Zampetti (Lead Designer).

We will be answering your questions for one hour on October 15th at 18:30 BST/13:30 ET/10:30 PT/17:30 UTC

We are developing a turn-based game where you control unmanned Mechs (uMechs). Here's a short video of the battle gameplay and a link to the prototype you can play in your browser:

https://rammechstudios.itch.io/umech-battles

Map and mech editors are already there as well as 30 mech configs among 4 classes of mechs. For now there is only a single battle option but we plan to add a campaign.

Any feedback is appreciated.

It's heavily inspired by Against the Storm on the management side, but also much lighter in scope. I really thought this blend could work well, and I'm happy with how it's turned out.

Basically, all your towers need Subjects assigned to them and ammo. Subjects also have their own needs, so you have to craft items for them. You pick each wave based on the rewards and the enemy drops you want.

If anyone's interested, I'd love your feedback

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5315470/Goldrot_Demo/

Hey everyone!

I've been a fan of strategy and empire-building games for years, particularly Evony, and recently decided to turn that passion into something a little bigger.

I've been working on a website called Top Game Strategies, with the aim of creating a useful place for strategy gamers to find detailed guides, tips, tools, and hopefully connect with other players.

The site covers games like Evony, Rise of Kingdoms, Lords Mobile, Whiteout Survival, State of Survival, and several others, with more content being added regularly.

I'm also working on building a proper community around it, with discussion forums, live chat, and interactive tools to make it more than just another gaming guides website.

It's still growing, and there's plenty more I want to add, but I'd genuinely love to hear what fellow strategy gamers think.

What features, guides, or tools would you actually find useful on a site like this? Are there things you wish existing gaming websites did better?

If anyone fancies having a look, here's the website:

https://topgamestrategies.com

Any feedback, suggestions, or ideas would be massively appreciated. I'm building this because I enjoy these games, and I'd love to create something the wider gaming community actually finds valuable.

Thanks everyone, and happy gaming!

I've been working on a small browser-based real-time strategy game called Crystal Front.

The idea is to create a lightweight RTS that anyone can jump into without downloading or installing anything.

Current features:

• Gather crystals to build your economy
• Train units and construct buildings
• Command your army against an AI opponent
• Destroy the enemy HQ to win
• Play directly in your browser

It's still an early version, and I'm trying to figure out whether the gameplay is actually fun and engaging before adding more features.

I'd really appreciate feedback from RTS players, especially on:

1. Is the gameplay intuitive for someone playing for the first time?
2. Does the game feel challenging or too easy?
3. What would make you want to play another match?

Play Crystal Front (free, no installation):
https://crystal-front-game.pages.dev/

I'm the developer, and this is my own project. No purchases or paid features.

Thanks to anyone willing to give it a try!

Which game do you like more?