Tyrannis

Little known fact: this game was developed and published by an indie development team of 1 person! With this in mind I think that this game has some solid tactical ideas. The aesthetic is pleasing to look at and the game itself knows what direction it wants to take players in. There are a few quality of life issues, but nothing too taxing on players. In addition, I'm sure that this game will be continually patched and supported to address any arising issues. PLEASE READ THE TUTORIAL BEFORE PLAYING: this game has a lot of mechanics to ingest that can trip new players up. Overall, I think that this game appeals to more die hard fans of strategy: people who enjoyed games like Defcon in the past are sure to enjoy this gem!

Tyrannis is a turn-based wargame that pits rebels using guerilla warfare vs. an overwhelming mercenary army. It has interesting mechanics that allow for a lot of tactical flexibility. The fact that you don't know where the enemy is creates a sense of paranoia and urgency that feels unique. Multiplayer is also a blast if you have some friends. It's a very well put together game, especially for one developed by one person. If you're a strategy game fan, you should check this one out.

Simple, effective asymmetric strategy game that'd benefit from a larger community. Easily worth the price.

An absolutely kickass game with a lot of potential. Not only is the gameplay great, but the story and all of the intel reports are top class. Since this was made by a TNO dev, it has a distinct TNO-type vibe to it that I absolutely love.

Reversed Afghanistan in the free world

Tyrannis is the best video game adaptation I have seen of tabletop COIN games like those designed by Brian Train or Volko Ruhnke. The lack of proper polish and some confusing features do not ruin what is the DEFCON of counter-insurgency. Simple moves give rise to great complexity in this simulation of upto two government players (the game says they are "mercenaries" but any counter-insurgency player will recognize them as the state or security forces) and upto five insurgent factions. This game is lacking some basic features I would expect in commercial software these days. Specifically, there is no way to turn the music off! Neither is there any audio slider. The soundtrack is kinda generic but very satisfying to listen to and successfully captures the complex emotions which are present in any insurgent situation. However it saddens me that I cannot listen to my own music while playing this game. Of course I could route the audio through different speakers and reach the desired effect, and for me this did work, but for the average consumer it may be awkward. Another thing that really makes the gameplay worse is the lack of ability to re-map the hotkeys. I have a mouse with five buttons on it but I can only use like one or two of them (the main ones). I would love to hotkey those remaining buttons to different views and unit actions. Hopefully you grognards play the game I do, with a good drink in one hand and my mouse in the other. Maybe add in some hotkeys for manipulating the state, media, cells, and units therein? This brings me to the map. The graphics are quite good, very smooth, consistent, and have the dot matrix effect you would expect from WarGames(1983). My only nitpick is a carry over from the previous paragraph; there is no way to easily switch between the different map filters. You can either left click on the icon several times (repetitive and annoying) or you can use the hotkeys (which cannot be rebound). The hotkeys are not bad, but it bothers me to no end that I cannot have them on my mouse. Fortunately those two small nitpicks are where the game stops being frustrating and starts being fun. This game truly innovates by allowing players to craft their own factions with unique combinations of abilities. This is a feature that is undersold and in my opinion should be expanded upon. There are a couple of faction abilities that are not really clear, some of them seem like archaic runes or algebra than an actual ability. It would have been nice for those abilities to have a tooltip clarifying on what they actually do. Instead we have to guess what this does: ".1 + infr / .2 * inf cost" or something like that. It does not tell me why I would want to pick it. For the most part the abilities are clear cut; +10 Mil to income, reduce the cost of your troops, increase media propaganda effect in regions, etc. Each faction has two points unless it commits to non-violence in which it gets four points. These points will be spent on faction abilities, with each weak ability costing 1 point and each strong ability costing 2 points. Strong abilities are usually just stronger versions of weak abilities. You can mix and match these abilities to achieve some interesting results. For example, in my most recent game I was able to pitch two government players against three rebels. One of the government players was focused on having a strong military to physically destroy rebel units, but the other government player was designed to conduct media propaganda campaigns and fight rebel influence in the cities by reducing the effectiveness of rebel cells. I don't think that many people will appreciate the nuance of this design. Counter-insurgency is a politico-military phenomenon, that is to say that you must win hearts at the same time as you must remove heads from bodies. This is true for the insurgents as well, since they will need the support of the population to counter the strong initial position of the government players. This is a COIN game, so government players start with all territories. Rebels move their units freely around the map. Each side only has a vague guess of where the other side's units are. Thus the rebels will most usually have the element of surprise, knowing where the enemy fixed positions are and where to strike. This is another place where the politico- side of the equation shines through - if rebels get enough sympathizers in a region then they get to see what enemy troops are in that region. How do rebels do that? They establish cells in states either through paying for it, or by stationing military units inside states. Each turn the rebel units will construct cells in their place of occupation (the state they are in). My rebels comprised three factions; one oriented towards military combat, one oriented towards generating political support (this one is non-violent), and one which is a mix of both. Playing in any of these roles is satisfying. Each turn you have to carefully consider whether you want to move your troops, and how. The government player comes closer to discovering you location every turn, will you stay mobile to make their efforts useless? Especially in the early game, the rebel player is typically avoiding combat and using their few units to build support and only hit where the government players are weak. This is something of gamble sometimes since the rebel players also do not know where government units are with 100% certainty. The combat is simple; you can have as many units attack are as eligible. When units attack they attack all at once. When combat happens, the side with the most units win and winner takes all (after political modifiers and faction abilities are applied). So the losing side loses all their units. If it is a draw (the units are equal in number) then no one dies and nothing happens aside from infrastructure damage and civilian deaths. It sounds simple, but what it leads to is you gambling with your units. If you think a state is undefended then you can just send in one unit to attack and capture it. But you don't know, it could have two units. If it has two units and you send one unit, that one unit will die. So maybe send 3 units? But what if they have 4? See, that's the dilemma. One game the rebels attacked a major stronghold controlled by the government. They had 16 units go into combat and found out that there were 15 government units there! In that single battle the government lost so many units that the rebels were able to overrun government states and take over enough to win the game. If the government would have had at least one more unit, then they would have been able to force a draw, in which case they would have had another turn to reinforce their position and possibly put down the rebellion. This is also a good lesson in the concentration of force. For either player, the way to win battles is to mass your forces into a single large army and roll through the map. So is that a winning strategy? I am not sure yet, since I don't consider myself as having mastered the game yet. Most games begin with the rebel player having only four units and the government player having many. Additionally the government controls all the land and thus all the income. By mid game the insurgent players should be earning enough to where they can replace their losses (although ideally they are moving their units around to prevent them from being cornered and destroyed) and build up the political support they need to win the game. In the end game I usually end up with at least a couple of death stacks of 4-8 units. I think from what I have experienced so far, there is no one winning strategy that dominates. If you mass your forces too centrally, then the other player can adapt in a number of ways. And if you do the reverse, that can be countered too. This is good because it means that the game is well balanced, well designed, and has great replay value (since there are many ways to victory).

good

very good

This game has alot of potential to be a great game. It is fun to play and it really hits the message its designed to home with the intel reports. I will be playing this game quite a bit for the future and am extremely excited to see what the developer does with the game.

This was a meaningful game to me. Although I do not always play it, I found the lore within it to be very interesting. I also liked how simple this game was to learn and to play. I enjoyed playing with with friendly AI to help me. Back on the lore, I found the writing to be well developed and the characters in them to be quite nice. I wish this to have more development. Illustrations, a campaign, maybe even some more content.