Turn-based or real-time with pause: the difference and how to choose

In a turn-based game, time moves only when a player acts. A turn is a fixed share of the action, and a character spends a budget to use it: action points in Jagged Alliance 2 and Fallout Tactics, time units in X-COM. When the budget is gone the character is finished, and the other side takes its turn.

In a real-time with pause game, time moves on a clock whether or not the player acts. The cost of an order is the seconds it takes to carry out, and the enemy is acting during those seconds. The pause lets the player think for as long as they like, but it does not suspend the consequences, because the clock starts again. Turn-based games mostly meter a turn with points. Real-time with pause games meter it with time.

The player has all the information the rules allow, and nothing changes while they read it. That makes odds readable. A shot shown at 65 percent is a decision, because the player knows what is being risked and can weigh it against the alternatives. Nothing depends on dexterity, so a slow hand or a bad day at the mouse costs nothing.

It also works one choice at a time, which is why it moves to a touchscreen so easily. XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games) reached iOS in June 2013, after its release on PC and consoles in 2012.

The enemy is doing something while the player decides. A turn-based game cannot fake that: a flanking group that arrives while the front line is still fighting, a door that opens at the wrong moment, a squad that is half across open ground when something spots it. Timing and converging plans become part of the problem. Two characters can be sent to arrive at the same instant from different sides, and the player tunes that with distance and speed instead of with who goes first.

It also wastes less of the player's time when nothing is happening. A squad walking across ground that is already clear does not need to be walked one step at a time. Turn-based games deal with this by running in real time until a fight starts, which is what Jagged Alliance 2 does.

Turn-based games have a few well-known ways to go wrong. The first is the alpha strike. When a side can move its whole squad before the other responds, whoever gets the first full turn with range can win the fight inside it. The usual defense is overwatch or reaction fire, which brings the second: both sides sit still, because the first to move into view is shot. Large squads bring the third, which is tedium. Twelve characters means twelve decisions a turn, followed by a stretch of watching the enemy's turn. The fourth is a feeling and not a fault in the rules. A player who misses a 95 percent shot remembers it, and an honest roll starts to read as a lie.

Real-time with pause fails differently. Pause-spam turns it into a turn-based game with a clumsy interface and nothing to price an action. Information is lost, because a crowded fight is a blur and the player sees a snapshot, not a sequence. And the pause interface carries the whole game. It is where the player spends their time, selecting characters, queuing orders and reading statuses, so a bad one makes the fight worse everywhere and not only at the edges.

Some games let the player pick. Fallout Tactics (Micro Forté, 2001) offered three combat modes, one of them continuous with action points that refill over time and the other two in turns, and the player chose among them. Pathfinder: Kingmaker (Owlcat Games, 2018) launched as real-time with pause and gained a turn-based mode in an update in August 2020. Its sequel, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (2021), had a turn-based mode announced during its Kickstarter in February 2020, and Owlcat said players would be able to switch between the two in the middle of a fight. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (Obsidian Entertainment, 2018) added a turn-based mode in January 2019, first as a beta.

Other games use each form for a different situation. Wasteland 2 (inXile Entertainment, 2014) and Wasteland 3 (2020) run in real time while the squad explores and in turns once a fight starts.

Jagged Alliance 2 (Sir-Tech Canada, 1999) looks like the same arrangement and is worth separating. Its tactical map runs in real time until a fight starts, and play switches to turns the moment one side spots the other. The real-time stretch is not a pause game. Nothing is queued and nothing is stopped. It is where the squad moves, sneaks and sets up, and its job is to decide where and how the fight begins. The turns do the fighting, with action points and a chance to interrupt the enemy's move. It treats real time as the way of getting to a fight and turns as the way of having it, which is a different arrangement from a game in which a single fight can be stopped and started.

The label tells less than the particular game does, but there is a pattern in who prefers which.

RAD Tactics is real-time with pause. It is a squad tactics game for Windows PC, set in a post-apocalyptic world with zombie and faction combat, made in Unity, and in development. We wrote this page to be fair to both forms. Several of the games that shaped ours, X-COM and Jagged Alliance 2 among them, are turn-based, and we do not think the other form is the lesser one.