10 – Wargroove

A vibrant, fantasy-themed turn-based tactical strategy game that positioned itself as the spiritual successor to the famous Advance Wars series from Nintendo, Wargroove was on the path to success since the very first day it was announced. If you never played Advance Wars, you control an army across a grid-based map, capturing towns to fund reinforcements and trying to utilize counter units in a sort of rock-paper-scissors kind of gameplay. Wargroove stands out by adding a new Commander unit, with an ultimate ability called “Groove” that can provide several buffs or deal massive damage. Wargroove stood out when it was announced because, for over a decade, players haven’t had a taste of Advance Wars, as Nintendo pivoted to focus on the Fire Emblem series instead.

9 – Wartales

Released in 2023 after a successful Early Access period, Wartales is an open-world RPG that tasks you with leading a band of mercenaries through a gritty, plague-ridden medieval landscape. Like Battle Brothers, it is entirely sandbox-driven, and the goal is to simply survive, explore, accumulate riches, and keep your crew going. The game set itself apart from Battle Brothers by being a lot more lenient on failures, having some of the best graphics of all time in a strategy game, with a beautiful open world, expertly rendered, and by being an overall chill experience that comes off as a bit more cosy, even if the setting itself is rather brutal. I don’t know how to explain this to you, but playing Wartales reminds me of traditional fantasy settings from other eras, like the 80s and the 90s, even if I never lived through that. It’s a weird feeling.

8 – Phantom Brigade

I want to give Phantom Brigade its time in the spotlight because there’s no way I can look at it as anything other than the videogame equivalent of The Ugly Duckling, one of the most underrated strategy games of today, that deserves a lot more attention. Released in 2023 after an exclusivity deal on the Epic Games Store, Phantom Brigade is a turn-based tactical RPG that puts players in command of a small squad of mechs in an attempt to liberate their occupied homeland. It follows a similar system to Into The Breach, as it gives players total information on what the enemy is going to do the following turn, and then it’s up to them to maneuver and plot their course around that. The initial reception to the game was lukewarm, at best, despite the game’s awesome premise, deep combat system, and beautiful graphics, mainly because its strategic layers just weren’t all that interesting. The 2.0 update changed everything by adding new regions, maps, and a new pilot system that brought the necessary depth players had been looking forward to.

7 – Mini Motorways

Dinosaur Polo Club really cooked something special with Mini Motorways. A minimalist puzzle-strategy game focused on designing the road map for a growing city. Mini Motorways takes direct inspiration from the artistic DNA of its predecessor, Mini Metro, and the game challenges players to draw roads connecting housing districts to their respective destinations, and it’s up to the player to ensure commuters can reach their work without creating a massive traffic jam. Let traffic accumulate too much, and the game is over.

As I write this and get ready to pack my bags to travel for work, the last thing I’ll do is to make sure that Mini Motorways is up to date on my laptop, because this late night at my hotel is going to be spend dealing with unrestricted urban growth, and making sure my traffic flows flawlessly- That is, until it doesn’t. With a new, and very recent major update called Tabletop Traffic that added a new town and new challenges, Mini Motorways keeps getting bigger and better with time. Beyond its relaxing yet challenging gameplay, Mini Motorways has left a distinct mark on the puzzle and simulation genres through its elegant design philosophy, making it one of the best games for players looking for a quick gaming session while navigating their busy existences.

6 – Factorio

Factorios offers a much different kind of strategic experience than most other strategy games. I think it’s fair to say that about 90% of strategy games exclusively focus on conflict or, at least, that’s the end goal of everything else you do before an inevitable confrontation. Factorio is all about being an engineer stranded on a hostile alien planet to build a rocket to escape. To do this, players must turn their environment into a sprawling, automated industrial wasteland with endless conveyor belts, automated trains, power grids, and defense systems. Before Factorio, automation was something of a late-game thing players worked towards. In Factorio, automation is the entire game. Factorio went on to create a sort of sub-genre of other Factorio-like games like Satisfactory, Mindustry, and Dyson Sphere Program.

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