Shades Of War

[h1]After several updates, a lot of core issues have been improved, so I'm revising my review.[/h1] The basic idea is that you build bases to get income, you use accumulated money to build turrets, and your income over time to upkeep those turrets. Turrets will auto-target nearby structures, but otherwise they will fire randomly to turn territory to your color. This means ALL turrets can spread territory, some more efficiently than others. Walls protect your territory from being converted by enemy fire. Castles are used offensively or defensively and can upgrade turrets within their range of influence. CONTROLS Although I haven't tried controller play, playing in mouse mode is pretty responsive and enjoyable. Your keyboard hand can work the camera, and you can bind controls to quickly select pointer modes. I use the default right mouse to open the turret menu, and I bound selection and removal pointers to 1 and 2, and pause to P. USER INTERFACE There is very little information displayed using a floating UI besides the build menu, and your economic information. MOST information you need is there, except for things like turret or town HP. Although technically displayed by showing the building gradually fading out as it takes damage, this is an imprecise and nearly unnoticeable way in the heat of battle to see when things are dying or dead. A subtle flashing effect might help here if you want to keep this "fade-out" style health indicator. Of course, health bars work just fine, but might clutter the screen. Perhaps an actual health number as an optional toggle? In any case, it's very easy to lose whole sides of your territory without even realizing it. SOUND Although there are sound effects, there aren't really any CUES. Without a mini-map or sound cues, your only real hope of knowing what's going on is to be looking directly at it. The music is acceptable. ART Sometimes, good art just isn't possible, and instead you get something that's got charm in other ways. This games artwork really reminds me of old-school flash games and I personally like it for that, but if you're hoping for some kind of strong art direction and execution, you won't find it here. STRATEGY The idea of having to smash the bribe button like 20 times to propose a diplomatic alliance is just not good. On one hand, large amounts of smaller bribes can technically mean a smaller territory could establish diplomacy with a larger one, but since territorial control is generally more important, it just makes sense to wipe out smaller nations. I'm not really sure why diplomacy is here at all in a game that's this fast-paced. Pre-selecting teams and just ignoring the diplomacy mechanics would be better. Generally, each turret has strengths that other turrets don't, but the player that can amass a huge number of "canon" turrets in their opponent's economic structure is basically going to win. To do that, you have to actually expand your territory constantly and look for small advantages wherever you can get them. You can't place anything on land you don't control. It might be tempting to prepare to spam 10 cannons to rapidly destroy your opponent's front lines, but most of the powerful weapons are very pricey and have high upkeep, so it's not normally tenable to chain OP turrets this way. Good balance of your resources, staying on top of both defense and offence, and making sure you don't let a bunch of territory turrets jump far into your bases and start spreading everywhere. DESIGN MAPS It has a map editor and workshop support right out of the gate! Nice! Auto-tiling and various layers makes building maps a breeze, although without prop additions or being able to set specific spawn points for players to start, tactical designs like chokepoints and things can only be randomly relied upon depending on your start. Opponents might reach strong positions first based entirely on fortune, or start with center map control when playing a 1v1. Until this is addressed, map creation is a fun distraction but not really an applicable tool for game design. UPDATED CONCLUSION The meta is more complex than I initially gave it credit for, and playing a variety of player counts and teams has shown me this game has some real competent design behind it, despite missteps. I originally called it a full release game that felt like Early Access, but the developer has been VERY receptive and willing to take critique or bug reports as soon as they come up. I'm happy enough to call this a fun little indie RTS that's worthy of a look.