A hundred games
Library
The four games in our influences section each started a family. This is the rest of the shelf: a hundred games that came before them, beside them, or after them, from 1988 to this year. Each page says what the game is, why it is still worth playing, and how it compares with the game it is filed under.
They are filed by the influence they sit closest to, not by genre. Some could sit under two. Inside each family they run oldest first.
01
Games like X-COM: UFO Defense
- 1988Laser SquadJulian Gollop's turn-based squad game for 8-bit computers, and the direct ancestor of X-COM
- 1993Space HulkTerminators in the corridors of a derelict ship, played in real time with a rationed pause
- 1995X-COM: Terror from the DeepThe X-COM sequel that moved the war under the sea and made everything harder
- 1997Incubation: Time Is Running OutA turn-based squad of marines against mutated monsters, in early 3D, from the Battle Isle series
- 1997X-COM: ApocalypseThe X-COM sequel set in one city, with real-time combat that pauses and politics that bite
- 1998Warhammer 40,000: Chaos GateTurn-based Ultramarines against Chaos, with losses that carry from one mission to the next
- 1999Abomination: The Nemesis ProjectReal-time squad tactics with a pause, in an America emptied by a plague and held by a cult
- 2002Laser Squad NemesisJulian Gollop's multiplayer tactics game played by email, with both sides' turns resolved at once
- 2003UFO: AftermathThe X-COM formula rebuilt in real time with a pause, after an alien cloud has killed most of humanity
- 2005Rebelstar: Tactical CommandJulian Gollop's handheld X-COM: rebels against alien invaders, in turns, on a Game Boy Advance
- 2005UFO: AftershockThe sequel to UFO: Aftermath, with humanity coming back down to a changed Earth
- 2007UFO: AfterlightA small human colony on Mars, a real-time-with-pause war, and every person needed for every job
- 2012XCOM: Enemy UnknownFiraxis's rebuild of X-COM, with two actions per soldier, a six-person squad and the base drawn as an ant farm
- 2013The Bureau: XCOM DeclassifiedAn XCOM origin story in 1962, as a third-person shooter where you slow time to give your two agents orders
- 2014XenonautsA faithful restatement of the original X-COM in an alternate 1979, with a modern interface
- 2016XCOM 2The aliens won the first war, and you run the resistance from a ship, with a clock on every mission
- 2017Mario + Rabbids Kingdom BattleNintendo's Mario characters in a turn-based cover shooter built on the XCOM model
- 2018Into the BreachThree mechs on an eight-by-eight grid, with every enemy attack shown before it happens
- 2018Warhammer 40,000: MechanicusTech-priests raid a tomb world of the Necrons, in turns paid for with points of knowledge
- 2019Phoenix PointJulian Gollop's own return to X-COM, with mutating enemies, rival factions and free aiming
- 2020Fort TriumphA fantasy party in XCOM-style turns, where you can kick an enemy into a tree and the tree falls
- 2020Gears TacticsGears of War as a turn-based game, with three actions per soldier and no grid
- 2020OthercideBlack-and-white turn-based horror, where healing one soldier means sacrificing another
- 2020XCOM: Chimera SquadA small XCOM spin-off about a mixed police squad in a city where humans and aliens now live together
- 2022Marvel's Midnight SunsFiraxis's Marvel tactics game, with a hand of cards instead of action points and an abbey to live in
- 2022Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - DaemonhuntersGrey Knights against a plague of Nurgle, with a campaign built closely on XCOM 2
- 2023Aliens: Dark DescentColonial Marines against the xenomorphs, in real time with slow motion, with stress and permanent death
- 2023Phantom BrigadeMech tactics on a timeline, where you see the next five seconds and plan every unit's moves through them
- 2026Xenonauts 2Goldhawk's second faithful X-COM, rebuilt in 3D with a new alternate Cold War
02
Games like Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
- 1993Cannon FodderA tiny squad of named recruits in real time, and a hill of graves that grows with every one you lose
- 1993SyndicateFour cyborg agents in real time, taking over the world for a corporation one city at a time
- 1996Close CombatReal-time squads in Normandy whose soldiers panic, flee and disobey when the fight goes bad
- 1996Syndicate WarsThe Syndicate sequel in 3D, with destructible cities and the choice of playing the church
- 1999Commandos: Beyond the Call of DutyA standalone set of harder Commandos missions, with new tools for handling guards without killing them
- 1999Shadow Company: Left for DeadMercenaries abandoned by their employer, fighting real-time missions across the world in early 3D
- 2001Commandos 2: Men of CourageThe sequel that let the commandos go inside, with rotating maps, a thief, a dog and huge levels
- 2001Desperados: Wanted Dead or AliveCommandos moved to the Wild West, with a bounty hunter and five friends chasing a train robber
- 2002Freedom ForceA team of 1960s-style superheroes in real time with a pause, fighting across a city they can wreck
- 2002Robin Hood: The Legend of SherwoodSpellbound's follow-up to Desperados, with Robin and his merry men robbing castles in real time
- 2003Commandos 3: Destination BerlinThe third Commandos, shorter and louder, in three campaigns from Stalingrad to Berlin
- 2004Full Spectrum WarriorTwo fireteams in a modern city, commanded rather than controlled, from a training tool built for the US Army
- 2004Soldiers: Heroes of World War IISmall squads in real time, with every soldier's inventory tracked and direct control of any of them
- 2005Freedom Force vs the Third ReichThe Freedom Force heroes travel back to the Second World War, in real time with a pause
- 2006Desperados 2: Cooper's RevengeJohn Cooper's gang returns in full 3D, with a camera that can drop to the shoulder of each character
- 2009Men of WarA simulated Second World War battlefield where any soldier can be taken over and every tank has a crew
- 2014Door KickersA SWAT team seen from directly above, with routes drawn on a paused map and timed with go codes
- 2015Invisible, Inc.Turn-based espionage with a clock on the whole campaign and an alarm that rises every turn
- 2015Satellite ReignA Syndicate successor in an open cyberpunk city, with four agents and bodies that can be cloned
- 2016Shadow Tactics: Blades of the ShogunFive assassins in Edo-period Japan, and the game that brought the Commandos genre back to life
- 2020Broken LinesEight soldiers crash-landed behind enemy lines in an alternate war, played in planned spans of real time
- 2020Desperados IIIMimimi's prequel to Desperados, the most polished game of its kind, with a gang of five in the West
- 2020Partisans 1941Soviet partisans behind German lines, with stealth missions and a forest camp to keep supplied
- 2023Shadow Gambit: The Cursed CrewUndead pirates with supernatural powers, and the last game from the studio that revived the genre
- 2025Commandos: OriginsA prequel to the original Commandos, telling how the team first came together, from a new studio
- 2025Door Kickers 2: Task Force NorthDoor Kickers moved to military operations abroad, with the same paused planning and drawn routes
03
Games like Jagged Alliance 2
- 1995Jagged AllianceThe first game about hiring mercenaries by the day and taking an island back one square at a time
- 1996Jagged Alliance: Deadly GamesThe first Jagged Alliance cut into separate missions, with multiplayer bidding wars for the best mercenaries
- 1998Soldiers at WarAn eight-man squad through fifteen Second World War missions, picked from thirty-two soldiers who remember
- 2000Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished BusinessA standalone follow-up to Jagged Alliance 2, set next door in Tracona, with a map editor
- 2003Silent StormTurn-based squad tactics in an alternate Second World War, where almost every wall can be shot through
- 2005Brigade E5: New Jagged UnionA Russian successor to Jagged Alliance 2, with mercenaries in a tropical civil war and a smart pause
- 2005Hammer & SickleA Soviet agent behind Western lines in divided Germany in 1949, on the Silent Storm engine
- 20077.62: High CalibreThe sequel to Brigade E5, with an enormous arsenal and the same smart pause, in a Latin American country
- 2008Valkyria ChroniclesA watercolour war in which each turn you spend command points and then run your soldier yourself under fire
- 2011Frozen SynapseSmall neon squads in generated buildings, both sides planning in secret and moving at the same time
- 2012Jagged Alliance: Back in ActionA remake of Jagged Alliance 2 that replaced turns with a pausable real time called Plan and Go
- 2014The Banner SagaA Norse caravan fleeing the end of the world, with turn-based battles and choices that kill people you like
- 2015Hard WestA supernatural Wild West in turns, where luck is a resource that dodges bullets and runs out
- 2015Mordheim: City of the DamnedWarbands in a ruined city searching for a fallen stone, with injuries that last forever
- 2016Darkest DungeonA gothic hamlet, a dungeon beneath it, and heroes who break under stress long before they die
- 2017Battle BrothersA low-fantasy mercenary company taking contracts on hexes, with men lost or maimed for good
- 2018BattleTechA mercenary company of giant walking tanks, with a ship to run, monthly bills and salvage to fight over
- 2018Phantom DoctrineA Cold War spy agency in turns, with an investigation board built from pins and string
- 2020Necromunda: Underhive WarsGang warfare in the vertical slums of a Warhammer hive city, with ziplines, injuries and a gang to keep
- 2022Expeditions: RomeA young Roman legate's war in turns, with companions to lead and a legion to manage
- 2022Hard West 2A posse of outlaws chasing a ghost train, where every kill refills the shooter's action points
- 2023Jagged Alliance 3The real sequel, twenty-four years later: an African country, a missing president, and the old mercenaries
- 2023WartalesA mercenary band in a world after a plague, wandering an open map and fighting in turns
- 2024Tactical Breach WizardsA squad of wizards in police gear, throwing enemies out of windows, with every move free to undo
04
Games like Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel
- 1988WastelandA squad of Desert Rangers in the American Southwest after a nuclear war, and the root of Fallout
- 1997FalloutA vault dweller sent out into a California burned by nuclear war, looking for a water chip
- 1998Baldur's GateThe fantasy role-playing game that made real time with pause the standard for party combat
- 1998Fallout 2The larger, stranger sequel, where a tribal descendant of the first game's hero looks for a device to save a village
- 1999Gorky 17NATO soldiers in a Polish town overrun by hybrid monsters from an old Soviet base, in turns
- 2004The Fall: Last Days of GaiaA German post-apocalyptic party RPG in 3D, played in real time with pause and adjustable speed
- 2013Shadowrun ReturnsCyberpunk with magic in a ruined Seattle, with a hired team in turn-based fights
- 2014Dead StateA zombie apocalypse in a small Texas town, a shelter full of survivors to keep fed, and turn-based fights
- 2014Wasteland 2The Desert Rangers return twenty-six years later, as a turn-based squad of four in Arizona
- 2015Rebuild 3: Gangs of DeadsvilleTake a city back from the zombies block by block, with survivors to assign and rival factions to deal with
- 2015The Age of DecadenceA post-apocalyptic world in the style of a fallen Roman empire, where talk and combat are equally deadly
- 2015UnderrailA Fallout-like set in the metro tunnels under a dead surface, with turn-based fights and deep character building
- 2018ATOM RPGFallout's world and rules moved to the Soviet Union after an alternate nuclear war
- 2018KenshiA vast, indifferent wasteland where you control a squad in real time with a pause, and start as nobody
- 2018Mutant Year Zero: Road to EdenA boar, a duck and a mutant woman in a ruined Sweden, sneaking in real time and fighting in turns
- 2018RimWorldColonists on a frontier world, a storyteller AI that sends raids and disasters, and every colonist a person
- 2019They Are BillionsSteampunk colonies against hordes of the infected, in real time with a pause you will use constantly
- 2020Wasteland 3The Desert Rangers in frozen Colorado, with a squad of six, a base, an armoured truck and turn-based fights
- 2021EncasedA 1970s research zone under an alien dome, a Fallout-like with turn-based fights and a party
- 2023Miasma ChroniclesA young man and his robot brother in a ruined America, sneaking in real time and fighting in turns
- 2023The Last SpellBuild by day and hold the walls by night against hordes of the dead, in turns, with heroes who do not come back