⁤Square Wars

Square Wars is a neat and simple strategy game where you play as a ruler of tiley imperium and you have to conquer every tile on the map. The game has robust fundamentals and is built around dead simple, yet effective mechanics, but also this game has some notable flaws. You have to dominate the whole map (50x26 tiles) and you do this by claiming other tiles (even if it means you have to fight other empires). In order to claim tiles faster, you have to acquire cards which increase the amount of tiles which you can claim (without this, it takes ages to claim anything more than first 50 tiles). In order to acquire cards you need to maintain economy, in order to maintain economy you have to expand and exploit resources and so on and so forth. This is a very robust gameplay loop which is engaging for those who absolutely love painting maps in strategy games. Card randomness is visible through varying traits attached to cards. They can and will change statistics, and sometimes you need to lose some battle stats in order to gain this one card which will produce food and prevent rebels and overall prevent collapsing of an empire. The basis is very sturdy and solid. An average game can last about an hour or so. Even in current state, there is noticeable replayability, provided you like strategy games. Technical aspect is good. This game simply works and I haven't encounter any major graphical or technical glitches yet. There are minor glitches. This game works on linux without issues. The game has very readable and distinct sound effects, but only for actions that the player make. If (for example) an enemy claim your territory, it will be completely silent which might be problematic, but on the other hand during battles, effects for each and every claim might turn into an absolute cacophony. Music on the other hand is just one simple loop which loops over and over again. The loop on itself is fine, I'd be a hypocrite if I was complaining about looping soundtrack after playing Balatro for about 200hrs, but this loop quickly becomes mundane and it would be beneficial if there was some other music. Graphics are minimalistic and readable. Every model present on the map has it's distinct shape and colour and every consumable resources look very different from resource depot. I can't nitpick anything. And now let's get to the elephant in the room - the game is in early access, so things around the game need polish. There are no ways to change resolution or set game in windowed mode. Also, there is no way of saving the game and continuing afterwards, so one match has to be played in one take. AI of enemies is also dead simple, and it would be beneficial if it had more niuance in tactics. There are no behaviour types, AI simply expands in its slow and steady pace. AI can't rush, intentionally attack or defend, it just grows and snowballs and if the player is smart enough to detect this pattern, the player can abuse this to an absurd extent (provided that player has strong economy). Overall game might look as if it's balanced around online play, yet I didn't encounter any way to look for online lobbies, other than write its name, which implies that somebody will share its name via other means (e.g. Discord or Steam). It would be nice if the game had some way to look for any lobby, but it just might be my oversight and I checked it while there were no lobbies. Overall, this game has great potential and developer is willing to make this game better and better. It is flawed like an EA game, but (in my opinion) this game will be polished and have more content. Price is low, so in my opinion it's worth trying.

Square Wars is my first hidden gem of 2025. It's a minimalist strategy game with subtle tactics you learn after a few playthroughs that begin to show its actual depth. You start to realize you can use cards in combination to say, damage an enemy with a volcano, then buy the expensive land expansion card to plop down in the middle of their territory after the ash clears, and suddenly you have an effective flanking tactic. At the current price point of $2.99 ($2.39 on sale) I'm thoroughly satisfied, having already exceeded my $1 = 1 hour of gameplay metric. Since this is an EA Game, some notes to the Developer from a UX perspective: - The gameplay loop clearly has implicit stages, where you're first grinding for material harvests, then grinding for stat boosts, then grinding for territory expansion. I'd love to see more cards that help facilitate this and make it more engaging. After four full playthroughs this became a game of how quickly I could refresh the cards and read the stat adjustments. This is fine and all, but will ultimately be the reason I stop playing as ~30 minutes of constant simple math is not very relaxing or engaging. -I love the basic Attack / Defense system, but it still isn't super clear to me based on the description in-game. The Attack and Defense values in your example equate to 100, which was never the case in my playthroughs, and I often had enemies with significantly lower Attack and Defense hold their own against me for longer than made sense based on the disparity. -I'd love a map editor with Community-made maps. Ideally, with more tile options for different landscapes, but even without that, I'd love to have a selection of maps to choose from. The random nature of the map is just fine for what it is, but I feel I'd enjoy the game more if I had a selection of strategically-crafted maps to choose from as well, with purposeful choke points, resource allocation, and the like. -I appreciate the sound cue for an attack happening, but it would be nice if there were a distinct sound if YOU are the one being attacked. Many times two enemies would be attacking each other, but I had to confirm each time I wasn't the one under attack. Directional sound for the attacks would be nice, too, so I know to move the camera in the direction of the sound. -If I think of more to say after more playthroughs I'll return, but great work and keep it up! I'm excited to see where you take this title and I'll be on the lookout for your future releases, too!

Fun at beginning, but such a pain to finish the game, even if you have great advantage over your enemies. You have max attack, max deffence, ton of resourses, but all you do is rerolling to get cards that give action points to attack enemy squares. It just amazingly disappointing at late game.

I love it, I never get bored playing it

Fun at first but claiming the entire board is a very slow grind, even when it's obvious you are going to win.

Ben severim bazen kafa dağıtmalık oyunlar oynamayı. Square Wars 'ta onlar biri olmuş benim için. Adı gibi kareleri ele geçirip, kaynak yönetimi yapıp, düşmanlarınla savaş oyunu bu oyun. Arkadaşlarınıza karşı oynayabileceğiniz online seçeneği de var ama ben denemedim hiç. Oynarken keyif verdi. Bu yüzden kendi adıma fiyat performans oyunu olduğunu rahatlıkla söyleyebilirim. Yazılımcısı Türk, ilgileniyor da oyunuyla; discordda gönderilen geri bildirimleri dinlediğini gördüm bu da gelişime açık bir oyun olacağı izlenimi verdi. Alanlara iyi oyunlar.

Oyunu anlayana kadar sıkıcı gelebilir fakat mekanikleri tam olarak çözdükten sonra daha eğlenceli bir hale geliyor, son güncelleme yemek sorununu çözmüş, Discord kanalında geri bildirimler dikkate alınıyor.

なかなか面白いです。 シンプルに領土を広げていくだけなので慣れると1時間ほどでクリアできます。 惜しいのは、領民は時間とともに増えていくのですが、 すべての資源は回収のみで生産がないので後半は食糧難に陥ります。

A nice and unique minimalistic strategy game, where pixelart style real time map domination meets card collection. You buy cards to collect resources, build houses and e.g. start volcanoes. The cards affect your stats including hand limit in positive/negative ways. In its current form it means a lot of micromanagement and super fast card collection to make a quick rush possible, otherwise winning is a relaxing but tedious task due to the slowly obtained 'ink' to occupy the map. It is in the early phase of development and already a lot of fun for me, so I don't really understand the negative reviews (I'd guess it is like 30% ready content-wise, compared to that it's already good). Current end game is a repetitive reroll/card hunt (as of the 2025 January state), but the developer is aware of the shortcomings and is improving it; also the community is actively exploring possible further ideas. (E.g. winning condition was full map control but now it's enough to destroy your opponents, speeding it up by several days. There wasn't enough food for end game, now with the mill it's too abundant and with the introduction of unlimited trade, in the endgame collecting gold/stone/wood is not even necessary. So trading will probably be limited, and to speed up endgame, a smaller map option is expected.) I hope we'll soon get a game start options screen, eventually a coop mode vs. AI and an option for hand crafted maps and map-specific rules. In its currect form 3-4 playthroughs are enough to become expert in most game mechanics, yet I return to it periodically, trying to beat my best time. :) The multiplayer is hard to win due to some missing mechanics, but that will probably change soon as well. All in all it's early access, not ready, not flawless but I think it's already worth trying out as it is really cheap and different from most other games I've played.

ポテンシャルは感じる。 現状はクソゲー。勝利目標がやばすぎる