We may try and think of a better name for this category next year, but ‘Tactics’ is the second half of the split Strategy award for 2016. These games focus more on the battles, the tactical game-play that commonly sees you control small numbers of units as opposed to grand armies.
Invisible Inc., from Klei Entertainment, has the honour of winning the first ever Tactics Award. This is a turn-based tactical __game with a focus on stealth – player’s must guide their agents through missions, gain experience in the four skills, and sneak your way to victory over an evil mega-corporation.
Considering this is from the same people who made the excellent Don’t Starve, It’s easy to see why it was a popular one amongst PT staff. Especially given the high praise it got from Nick in his 5-star review:
The pacing of Invisible, Inc. is excellent and once you get the hang of it you can move quickly through turns. The speed-of-play dovetails nicely into the urgency of the overall narrative. In each mission you have a primary objective. It might be to find important information or steal an object of great value. It might be to rescue an important captive or just steal some credits. The objective drives your __game plan, but even once you've secured your primary objective getting out alive is often the most difficult, and most fun, part of a mission. Things can go sideways in a hurry and staying one or two rooms ahead of the pursuit and narrowly escaping a tough spot provides a huge thrill.
A well-deserved win. Our only criticism is that it took so long to come out on mobile!
App Store Link
Runner-Up: Warbits
This was another PT 5-Star rated game. In fact, there were several incredibly high-calibre titles fighting it out for this award, including the recently released SteamWorld Heist, and Slitherine’s mobile adaptation of the Heroes of Normandie boardgame.
Warbits conquered them all however. An homage to the classic Advance Wars series that was prevalent on Nintendo’s hand-held devices, Warbits is very modern strategy game in every sense of the word and boasts one of the best online multiplayer experiences around.
As our phantom reviewer sums up in their review:
Despite the clear influences from Advanced Wars, Risky Labs have stood on the shoulders of giants and created something that is a thoroughly unique game. Where games like Front Wars, Rogue Planet, or Mecho Wars seem more like a reskinning of the Advance Wars experience, Warbits takes that core gameplay and modifies it for mobile gaming while, at the same time, adding their own features to give the game something extra. For example, the split-screen combat results animations from Advance Wars have been scrapped and battle results are shown on the map as they occur. This works to speed your turn up and over the course of multiple online games is a blessing. The Wall and Reactor terrain items add a new twist to the maps. Walls block all units from crossing them and Reactors give Charges and add another map element for players to contest. Finally where Advance Wars had an extensive, and often difficult, campaign game, Warbits has focused on online multiplayer.
An excellent runner-up – we hope the studio comes out with more in 2017.
Apple App Store Link
Congratulations to Risky Labs and Klei Entertainment for their awards. Stay tuned for more GOTY coverage over the coming week.
To keep track of all the winners and runner-up’s during the 2016 Awards; please see the Awards Index Page.
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