Reading
Writing
Pieces about the kind of game this is. Some are explanations of things the genre never bothered to explain to anyone outside it. Some are about the games we came from, and why they still set the bar. None of them are marketing.
01
All pieces
- EssayBrutality and despair: what the first two Fallout games got rightThe 1997 and 1998 Fallout games refused to pay the player back, and that refusal is the thing we are actually trying to inherit
- ExplainerA short history of the isometric tactics gameThe slanted view was a trick for drawing depth on hardware that could not do it. How it ended up welded to squad tactics, why both nearly died, and why the view outlived the reason for it
- ExplainerTactics, strategy, or tactical RPGFour labels get used as if they meant the same thing. Three questions tell them apart, and the answers explain why a store page uses whichever one sells
- ExplainerWhat real-time with pause meansThe clock runs, the player stops it to give orders, and it resumes: what the term means, where it came from, and where it goes wrong
- ExplainerTurn-based or real-time with pause: the difference and how to chooseHow the two ways of running a fight differ, what each does best and worst, and how to tell which one suits a player
- ExplainerIs XCOM turn-based or real timeTurn-based, in every game anyone means when they say XCOM, with two exceptions worth knowing about
- ExplainerX-COM or XCOM: what the hyphen meansOne punctuation mark separates two different series, made eighteen years apart by studios with nothing in common
- ExplainerWhy are tactics games so hardSix reasons, only one of which is the difficulty setting, and the handful of fixes that work for all of them
- ExplainerPermadeath, and what studios put in its placeLosing a soldier for good is the oldest rule in the genre and the one most often quietly removed. What it was for, why the save file ruins it, and the five things designers replaced it with
- ExplainerWhy your ninety-five per cent shot missedUsually the number was honest and one in twenty came up. Sometimes the number is a deliberate lie, and in two famous series the lie is in your favour
- ExplainerCover, and how a half wall became the grammar of the genreTwo schools: cover as a number on a tile, or cover as an object a bullet has to get through. Each one pays for readability in a different currency
- RecommendationsTactics games where you can shoot through the wallsThe short list of games where cover is a physical object you can destroy rather than a number attached to a tile
- ExplainerOverwatch, and the long argument about shooting on someone else's turnThe mechanic that turns a position into a threat, where it came from, and the way it quietly ruined its own games until somebody put a clock on it
- ExplainerWhat makes a good tactics mapA map with one correct answer is a puzzle. A map with none is a shooting gallery. The whole craft is in the gap between those two
- ExplainerHow big should a squad beX-COM sent fourteen soldiers into a mission. Its own remake sent four. What changed in between is the whole modern history of the genre
- ExplainerWhat the enemy is actually doingTactics AI is not trying to beat you, and the cleverest enemy in the genre is usually the one that behaves the most predictably
- ExplainerInventory, weight, and the rucksack problemSorting bags is the least glamorous thing in the genre, and deleting it takes the scavenging out with it
- ExplainerHow long should a tactics campaign beEvery complaint about length in this genre is really a complaint about repetition, and the two get confused in nearly every review
- ExplainerMorale, stress and panic: the second health barThe mechanic that takes the controller out of your hands, why players put up with it, and the one rule that decides whether it feels fair
- ExplainerWhat happens between missionsThe strategy layer is the part nobody puts in a trailer, and it is the reason a fight is worth having at all
- ExplainerWhy zombies suit a tactics gameThe most overused enemy in games is also one of the few that makes a tactics game better, and both of those things are true at once
- ExplainerWhy squad tactics belongs to small studiosThe studios that invented this genre mostly went under, the ones keeping it alive are often three people, and both facts have the same cause
- RecommendationsTactics games for beginners: where to startFour games to begin with, three to avoid until later, and the handful of habits that make the whole genre click
- RecommendationsThe best turn-based tactics games on PCSorted by what you actually want from one, because the best turn-based tactics game depends entirely on how much of your life you are offering it
- RecommendationsThe best real-time tactics games on PCStealth puzzles, simulated gunfights and squads you command rather than control, all of it running until you hit the pause key
- RecommendationsGames like Fallout Tactics: post-apocalyptic squad tacticsThe search splits into two wants, the wasteland or the squad, and the games that answer each one
- RecommendationsGames like X-COM: the 1994 original and what came afterGames like the 1994 X-COM, sorted by which half of it they keep: the tactics, the campaign, or both
- RecommendationsGames like Jagged Alliance 2, and which parts of it they keepJagged Alliance 3, the 1.13 mod, 7.62, Silent Storm and more, sorted by which part of the original each one actually delivers
- RecommendationsGames like Commandos: a guide to real-time stealth tacticsEvery game worth playing if you want Commandos again, sorted by which of its rules each one keeps
- RecommendationsThe best squad tactics games of the 1990sThe decade that invented the genre twice, in turns and in real time, and settled almost every rule it still runs on
- RecommendationsThe best squad tactics games of the 2000sThe decade the big publishers walked away, and the one where the most interesting experiments actually happened
- RecommendationsThe best squad tactics games of the 2010sOne remake in 2012 brought the genre back from the dead, and then teams of two and three did the interesting work with it
- RecommendationsThe best squad tactics games of the 2020s so farMore squad tactics games are being made now than at any point in the genre's history, and the one everybody waits for is missing