20. Age of Wonders: Planetfall
4X games hardly come with this much character – from the outset, Planetfall welcomes you to a colourful world with plenty of outstanding factions. Even though it offers XCOM-style combat, Planetfall doesn’t overstay its welcome with long-winded battles, and instead turns out to be a 4X experience that’s great for beginners. Managing your colonies is easy thanks to highly readable menus, and each faction offers a meaningful story that provides a steady motivation for advancement. While it’s not unique in the world of 4X, Planetfall’s setting does enough to set it apart from what’s currently available, and each aspect from battle to society management is consistently fun to play.
Available on: PC, PS4, Xbox One
19. Gears Tactics
It’s not far from cover shooter to tactics game, this or similar must Xbox Game Studios have thought when they developed Gears Tactics. As gory as the rest of the franchise, Gears Tactics offers interesting skill combinations between your squad members and rewards risk-taking. It also doesn’t hurt that Gears Tactics looks absolutely stunning and tends to turn the usually rather quiet and tense tactics genre into quite a spectacle. An absolute must for Gears fans, it’s also a worth addition to the library of any fans of turn-based tactics.
Available on: PC
17. Wargroove
You can play as a dog commander called Caesar. Really, that should be all the convincing you need, but with a fantastic turn-based system and lots of chances to test the strategically inclined side of your mind, Wargroove offers plenty of tactical challenges for players of all skill levels. Charming 2D pixelated graphics set the scene for its varying campaigns that are quite similar in style to the battles found in the Fire Emblem series, or the classic Game Boy Advance title Advance Wars. With three different modes including an online mode, puzzle mode, and arcade mode, you can choose from over 12 different commanders who all have their own unique personality, power and motivation. And if you fancy creating your own challenges to share with other friends or the Wargroove community, it has a very neat in-game editor that lets you craft your own custom maps, missions, sub-quests, and stories, as well as give you the ability to change up the rules of the game without using any mods.
Available on: PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch
16. Anno 1800
The latest in the Anno series, Anno 1800 takes place at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution - a pivotal time in history that had a significant impact on the social, economical, and environmental climate. You’re thrown into the ever advancing new era, and it's up to you to decide how you want to run your very own industrious landscape - be it in in smoky cities of Europe, or the Jungle-filled climbs of South America. With ever advancing technology, plenty of social upheaval and a lot of messy politics, Anno 1800 lets you get stuck into running the city however you wish. With new features that let you go on expeditions and micro manage your factories, you can decide to milk your industries for all they’re worth, or help it thrive and prosper. As the technology advances and the landscapes change, you have to keep adapting your strategy to keep up with the times. It’s a challenging, addictive city builder that really requires you to take the time to think about your choices, and how you manage your way through the turbulent, exciting time in history.
Available on: PC
15. Frostpunk
Frostpunk is an outstanding entry to the relatively new genre of survival city building and management. On a version of earth permanently ravaged by arctic temperatures and severe ice storms, you must help your colony to keep warm, keep fed, find other survivors and deal with the injuries and technical failures that will inevitably happen. Frostpunk’s inevitability is different from the randomly generated fires or rumblings of an unhappy populace in other games. Here, disaster is a certainty and you have to make do with the bare minimum all of the time. You will have to make difficult, life or death decisions in an oddly beautiful environment. Because it can be emotionally taxing, the challenging campaign isn’t overly long, but it provides a new point of view on the more sleepy, chill city building genre.
Available on: PC, PS4, Xbox One
14. Cities: Skylines
With the slow death of the popular SimCity franchise, developer Colossal Order and publisher Paradox Interactive stepped in to take over the city building crown. The simulated cities you can build here will be teeming with life, and building itself is intuitive if you’ve ever played a similar game and easy enough to grasp if you haven’t. Like most Paradox games, Cities: Skylines wants you to be in for the long haul, with an astounding amount of DLC and excellent mod support, to make sure you can make a city uniquely yours. If you’re looking for an oldschool city building experience with awesomely large cities, there’s still nothing better than this.
Available on: PC, PS$, Xbox One, Switch
13. Invisible, Inc.
The concept of Invisible, Inc. was made for turn-based games – try to sneak into an office undetected, get what you came for and sneak out. All Invisible, Inc. really needs to spread its charm are its hyper-alert guards and the fact that you don’t know where what you’re looking for actually is. It’s a stylish heist adventure with a large roster of agents and plenty of different ways to tackle missions, and a really cool evolution of the popular XCOM formula.
Available on: PC, PS4, Switch
12. The Banner Saga
If you’re after a turn-based strategy RPG, The Banner Saga trilogy offers a deep, rich story that plays out through a series of tactical decisions and strategic battles. Every choice you make will have real consequences and could even result in the death of a character, which ups the stakes of your approach to certain events. You follow the saga of vikings in a fictional world populated by the Dredge race, who are heavily armoured soldiers that harbour a hatred for humans. Journeying along with a hunter named Rook and his daughter Alette, along with many other companions, you unravel a lore-filled narrative that hinges on the strategic decisions you make. If you’re after something that will push you to be tactical, but also offers up an engaging story that you have a hand in making, any of the Banner Saga titles will tick all the right boxes for you. And it's gorgeous art style and animated sequences make it all the more worthwhile.
Available on: PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch
11. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2
If you enjoy big explosions and battles in space, this is just the ticket. Based on Game Workshop’s tabletop game, this RTS lets you play out massive naval spaceship battles in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Building up from the first in the series, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 lets you choose from 12 factions from the tabletop game, such as the likes of the Imperial Navy, Drukhair, Necrons and many more. With tons of customisation options for your ships, you can command and conquer your way through enemies fleets and have a blast while you’re doing it. If you want to just dive into a battle you can, but there are also three main faction solo campaigns to strategize your way through with the Tyranids, Necrons or the Imperium.
Available on: PC
Turn to page 2 for more of the best strategy games...
