Rebel Inc: Escalation

A nice, well balanced Strategy game. It doesn't overcomplicate anything (as many strategy games set in modern times often do) but still keeps up a sharp difficulty with the simple mechanics it does have. Its roguelike-ish campaign mode is another nice addition to keep you busy once you've succeeded with all the standard missions.

If you enjoyed Plague Inc., this is an easy recommendation. Instead of trying to infect the world, you're tasked with stabilizing a region by balancing civilian development, military operations, and public support while dealing with an active insurgency. It sounds simple, but every decision has consequences. What I like most is that there's no single strategy that works every game. You constantly have to adapt to changing situations, manage your budget wisely, and decide whether to invest in infrastructure, healthcare, education, or military strength. Focusing too much on one area usually comes back to hurt you later, which makes every victory feel earned. The different governors, maps, and difficulty levels add a lot of replayability, and the Workshop support keeps the game fresh with community-made scenarios. It can be challenging at first, but once the mechanics click, it's incredibly satisfying. Overall, Rebel Inc: Escalation is a well-designed strategy game that rewards careful planning and smart decision-making. If you enjoy games that make you think several steps ahead instead of relying on luck, I highly recommend giving this one a try.

I should have listened to the negative reviews. This game apparently expects you to believe that the U.S. Air Force, Marines, and elite special forces can be defeated by ten guys with AKs because... game mechanics. The logic is baffling. Before you can build basic infrastructure like water or toilets, you have to pay a "setup" cost because, apparently, setting up the ability to build requires its own setup. Meanwhile, even if you've eliminated 97% of the insurgency by prioritizing military operations, you're still punished because you didn't immediately provide every village with sanitation and phone service. Somehow, two insurgent camps hidden in remote caves are enough to destabilize an entire country of hundreds of thousands of people. Then there's the reputation system. If it reaches zero, the game acts as if the entire U.S. military instantly loses all morale, packs up, and surrenders. Not because you've lost the war, but because an arbitrary reputation meter hit zero. It's one of the least believable mechanics I've seen in a strategy game. Anything above Easy difficulty is even worse. Once you understand how reputation actually works, you realize the challenge isn't strategic—it's artificial. Insurgents seem to spawn everywhere, and if one manages to reach a central province, you're expected to deploy what feels like half the U.S. military to encircle the map just to stop one guy with a phone and an AK from sprinting around in circles while somehow destabilizing an entire nation. Apparently, the population is also perfectly happy living for years without water, toilets, or basic services because you were forced to spend every available resource containing endless insurgent spawns. I also have no idea how these urban areas are supposed to exist without functioning sanitation, but that's the game's internal logic. I was expecting a tactical strategy game where planning and decision-making mattered. Instead, it feels like you're fighting arbitrary mechanics and RNG more than the enemy. I wouldn't recommend buying it.

### 这叛军比瘟疫公司的圣堂还难打，这b地方蝙蝠侠来了也收服不了

I may not be an avid strategy game player but Rebel Inc is one of my favorite strategy games. I love the unique setting/premise and I really like the game's take on asymmetrical warfare. I also think the plague inc hexagonal upgrade format really suits this type of singleplayer RTS well. The meat of the game is in balancing your budget between the needs of the people and fighting the insurgents as the game state evolves. It's so satisfying watching the civilian initiatives roll out over the whole zone and seeing everything get a little bit greener and roads get repaved. Much more interesting to look at than plague inc's red splotches. I appreciate that fighting the insurgents is difficult, but on the higher difficulties not noticing something small could undo your whole line of defence and lose you the game. Especially when insurgents can silently slip into new zones. The end result of this on the highest difficulty is the player being hyper vigilant about what the insurgents are doing, pausing the game every 3 seconds to make sure they are able to pre-empt an insurgent movement. The hard decisions and resource allocation also get more difficult, which is good, but the hyper-vigilant gameplay of just Watching them is not fun to me. I don't like how most of the unlockable governor's gimmicks make them straight up worse than just running the civil servant. Their unique upgrades usually have some dramatic downside to buying it, meaning you almost never interact with the unique aspect of the governor if you're trying to win. Also if you're just playing the main game on the base maps, every game will be the same in terms of the order you get most upgrades. You'll need to play the other modes to really shake things up. I do wish there could be more variation in what is effective to do in the main game. But at the end of the day the game is unfortunately blatant pro US Imperialism propaganda. Even though you are occasionally incentivized to do evil stuff with pop-up decisions, everything else in the game enforces the idea that you (a province of the US puppet state post Afghanistan invasion) are a force of good and belong in the region. The end game is to make everyone like you by gradually injecting billions of dollars into the region's infrastructure and materially improve peoples' lives. Funnily enough the US did actually do this in post-WWII Japan and post-Korean War South Korea and it worked very well! But we most certainly did not do this in Afghanistan. So if you do decide to buy this game, keep in mind that you are experiencing an alternate telling of history more convenient to the Department of State than ours. Great game aside from that.

На пару вечерков под пэво пойдет

очень затягивает, похожа чем-то на plague inc короче довольно интересная и сложная стратегическая игра

Great game, keep coming back to it, even without updates. Really scratches an itch that other games don't

Rng ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with squads artificially limited by time to build and time of life.

A heavily RNG dependent mobile game which limits your agency down to a few choices. All the maps felt the same. Most of the game revolves around moving little pieces back and forth, not because there's any strategy to it, but because you're artificially piece limited. And while you're doing this, you're just waiting for good event rolls or for infrastructure to be automatically built. Not at all transparent around how insurgents appear, which further limits player agency, resulting in just playing a whack-a-mole game.