Steam Tactics

Very solid Strategy RPG-lite. A bit simple but enough depth to sink your teeth into if you got a dozen hours or so to spare on the campaign as you take your animal aviators into the sky to take down sinister forces at work behind the stag throne. So get to saving Princess Bambi and all the little steampunk critters in Skyland. They're far too cute to let them fall from that high up.

This is one of those hidden gems on Steam, that is being buried under an avalanche of asset-flip crap and other low quality games. I like tactical games, and Steam Tactics did not disappoint me. The basic gameplay is rather simple: different guns have different attack patterns and damage types, you choose an optimal loadout for your ships, and the combat is basically about positioning: place your ships so you can deal maximum damage while avoiding or minimizing damage from counterattacks. This makes for a surprisingly deep and engaging gameplay. [b]Pros[/b] -Solid gameplay mechanics. Simple, yet clever and satisfying -Does not mentally overburden you. You have to think to win, but you can play in a pretty relaxed manner and don't have to calculate a ton of numbers for every turn and action you perform -Likeable characters -Visuals are nice. There is nothing really special about graphics here, but overall Steam Tactics looks very nice, and character art is very good -I liked the music, it is catchy and fits in the game pretty well -Steampunk! Why are there so few games in that setting? [b]Cons[/b] -The ending was not very spectacular, so I felt kinda disappointed -Music can get repetetive if you play long enough -$12 feels a bit overpriced? Though considering that you can spend quite a lot of time getting all achievements, that may not actually be the case [b]Arguable[/b] -The AI is not very consistent. Most of the time it plays pretty well, but sometimes enemy ships can get stuck or perform some obviously dumb actions Overall the game is very enjoyable, so get it, especially if you see it on sale.

It's a honest game. Not really hard when you understand how to play but can be a bit grindy by moment. The story is doable in 15 hours ( but I grinded a bit so it can be finished earlier ) and I still got a bunch of 2 and 3 stars levels to do to max everything, I suppose I would need less than 25 hours to completly finish it. Kind of honest for a 12 $ game and I think I could replay it later. Battles takes place on a 8x6 grid, with random unpassable tiles and some bonus/malus tiles ( more/less damages or resistances ). Regularly a repair kit or a chest of gold can appear on the field. Each ship has 6 different resistances to damages to counter the 6 different kind of weapon. All the weapons come with various range and fire direction ( either in line or in diagonal ). Flamers and acid-sprayers got the lowest range, missiles got the longest. There is no AOE or multi-hitting mechanics in this game. Each time you attack a ship it can counter-attack IF you are in range of one of his weapon and the same rule apply to your own counter-attacks. Ships also have different " equip load ". This value represent how heavy your combined weapons load is and affect how many tiles your ship can travel per turn. The max is 4 and the min is 1. But the various weapons got different weight ( flamers and sprayers being the lighter ones and missiles/canons the heaviers ) which combined to the right ships allow you to use up to 3 weapons while still being able to move enough. It's possible to mix weapons ( using a flamers with a machine gun and a missile launcher ) but weapons damage and critical rate are affected by the pilote skills, so it's best to specialize the pilots and focus on 1 or 2 type of weapons only. Overall some weapons works better than others. Missiles and canons feels a bit useless ( at least in the story part ) because the battlegrounds are only 8X6 with some clutter. So long ranged weapons aren't that good because it's too easy to get boxed and cornered by ships with short range weapons without being able to fire back. I will also add the fact that a lots of ennemy ships have huge resistance to canon attacks overall. Flamers and sprayers are way better choices BUT all levels always feature highly ( mostly immune ) resistant to one of these attack ships so you still need to mix and match the others weapons to win. So yeah the battle feels balançed enough but the base tactic is always the same to win : Focus all your fire on one ennemy, destroy it then focus on another. So it make the game repetitive, bigger maps with more varied ships per battle would be better.

Cool game. Adorable characters, exciting story. The game is not overly complex, but makes you think and calculate your actions both on the battlefield and inbetween combats. Important thing is that you are never stuck if you cannot beat a level, just go back and replay previous levels on a higher difficulty. Quite addictive. On the negative side, the workshop is clunky to access. The music could've been more varied. There are some minor bugs, though developer actively fixes them, so I guess it will be alright soon. It's surprising that the game was made almost entirely by one person.

Fun game, the grind was fun too! Thank you!

7/10 In Steam Tactics, you play as a commander that gives orders to a team of anthropomorphized pilots. You begin with a dog and frog, and as the game proceeds you pick up a cat and fox. The story is interesting enough, I suppose, featuring a zealot religious alligator who seeks to complete his imagined divine plan. The game has a good number of missions, and each may be played (eventually) at three different difficulty levels, so there is a lot of game here. There are six different weapon types in the game: machine guns, torpedo launchers, cannons, flamethrowers, acid sprayers, and tesla (or electricity) zappers. You can equip them on your ships, and you will face these same weapon types from your enemies. As you proceed through the game you'll not only find a couple variants of each weapon type, but you'll also find additional ships that possess different combinations of resistances to different weapon types. The game takes place on a grid, and this is where a lot of the strategy comes in. Every weapon in the game has a unique range and direction that it fires. One of the first machine guns that I equipped could only fire two squares away in each cardinal direction. When I say that it can only fire two squares away, I mean it - if an enemy is only one square away to the East, for instance, you can't target it with that weapon. In addition, if an enemy targets you from a square that you could attack, your ship will counterattack (if it is still standing). There are weapons that fire only one hex away, such as flamethrowers and acid sprayers, and there are some that only fire at targets 3 or 4 squares away. In addition, certain weapons fire diagonally, at targets that are NW/NE/SW/SE. When you look at the weapons in the inventory screens, you can see the fire patterns. Hilariously enough, this can create situations where a 1-range ship can continually close the distance on a 3-range ship without the latter getting a chance to attack. The other strategic piece is how you outfit your ships. If you equip multiple weapons with the same attack pattern, then each attack will consist of multiple shots. However, you may choose to equip weapons with many different attack patterns. In this case, your attacks may not be as powerful, but you'll have multiple patterns from which you can counterattack. However, equipping multiple weapons on your ships will slow them down, reducing movement. Adding to these pieces, there are particular spots on the grid in the late game that either increase/decrease armor or increase/decrease attack power for any ship occupying them. This creates a cool strategic dance, where you should take stock of where the enemies are and move ships with fire patterns that can attack them into the armor and attack power spots, or move all your ships into locations where they can take advantage of enemies that move into armor reduction spots. I thought all this was pretty compelling, but there are absolutely some gripes I have with the game. First of all, this game absolutely expects you to grind and replay content. When you begin the game, you are playing the one-star difficulty version of each level. You can progress for a while, but soon enough you'll run into a level that is clearly too tough. At this point, you're expected to go back and complete the two-star difficulty versions of previous levels. Later, you'll hit a point where unplayed one-star levels and two-star versions of previous levels are too difficult, and you'll go back to the beginning of the game to begin playing the three-star versions of levels you've already played. In addition, there are not really enough materials to go around to upgrade all of your weapons - eventually, you'll need to replay versions of levels that you've already played to build up materials for weapon upgrades. The game gets pretty tough and slow towards the end, especially if you run into ships with high resistances to the type of weapons you're using. My suggestion to mitigate this slog would be to simply do weapon class upgrades instead of upgrading each machine gun variant individually (for example). For instance, upgrade all machine guns or flamethrowers at once, and do away with combining copies of weapons (and perhaps ships) to create 2-star versions. The inventory has no sorting system (show me only all acid sprayer weapons, for instance), so this really makes you slow down the action to scroll through all your loot. In addition, drop the pilot upgrading system. This just makes it easy to specialize and screw yourself over in late-game levels. It's not fun to have to keep track of the books that allow you to re-spec your pilot. Of course, you could just balance all your upgrade points to make your pilot equally effective in everything - but then, what's the point? It would be fantastic to get a preview of which enemies you'll encounter on a certain level. What are their resistances? What weapons are equipped on each ship? This way, you can switch around your ships and weapons to ensure that you're as effective as possible. Towards the end of the game, it became necessary to pay attention to enemy ships and weapons, and I would often start a level and then quit after seeing what I was up against. However, I had specialized my pilots and weaponry to such a great extent that the weapons I needed were often lower level, and I no longer had the materials I needed to upgrade them without replaying levels on difficulties that I'd already beaten. At this point I'd had enough, with eight 3-star difficulty level variants left to complete. I certainly enjoyed my time with the game and got my moneys worth, but there are ways to increase strategy and engagement in the late game while still respecting the player's time, minimizing grinding and level replays.

Everything is tedious and relatively basic, story is very light and non interesting, ship/team building is rather basic, combats are only based on some basic mechanismd. It's right that the basic mechanisms of combats don't make combats themselves very basic, but at end it's just an abstract game not much fun and not at all appealing. I suppose it's fine for some quick combats sessions, but then get the mobile version, it's not suiting desktop PC.

Steam Tactics is a furry/steampunk lightweight/mobile turn based strategy game. Position units carefully to ensure enemies stick within your target areas and step along a linear sequence of battles. While the game works well enough and supports 4K, the art style doesn't sit well with me. The gameplay is very simplistic when compared to more serious rivals like the Heroes of Might & Magic series. Gamers looking for a decent strategy game should consider the superior alternatives. I would consider giving this a "maybe" if there was an option, but Steam doesn't provide this, and the game is just not good enough that I would recommend it over better competitors.

I've won this game through steamgifts website. This is very basic strategy game and the meaning of word "steam" is very light here as well. If you are ok with the game that resembles an android game but is fun, then this is worth recommending. The game is rather short, for few evenings, the tactical part is light (that hex grids on screenshots is core of the game), it requires thinking, but complete with basic managing and upgrading, it plays surprisingly pleasant. A relaxing game that plays without problems on Linux (through Steam Play). It is not worth the basic price tag IMHO, but it is worth to get it while in bundle or while discounted.

Quite a fun tactical game! The customization of ship+pilot+weapons allows for some hours of fun eventhough i'd have loved a few more weapons available at Merchants to try even more combinations. It's easy to grasp the mechanics and the UI/GUI is spot on as well. EDIT: Would have liked some filter or tab for equipment and ships as well.