Door Kickers

Door Kickers is a 2014 real-time tactics game from the Romanian studio KillHouse Games. You command a SWAT team, seen from directly above, in short missions: rescue hostages, defuse a bomb, arrest a suspect. Each map is a building with rooms, doors and enemies you can only see once your officers can.

You plan by drawing paths for each officer on the map, choosing where they look, which doors they open and how, and setting go codes so several officers act at the same moment. The game can be paused at any time to change plans, and the same plan can be run step by step or all at once.

It is one of the cleanest real-time-with-pause games there is. Missions are short, plans are visible, and a good plan carried out cleanly is very satisfying. Officers level up and new equipment unlocks over a campaign.

It is focused on one kind of situation, room clearing, and some find it repetitive. It has no story to speak of.

Door Kickers shares Commandos' small team in real time, its importance of sight lines, and its maps as puzzles. It adds a pause and the ability to plan simultaneous actions with go codes. Of all the games in this list, it is one of the closest to the idea of real time with pause applied to a modern squad.