Steam Tactics

Steam Tactics sounds like a broad strategy game, but what matters is the turn-by-turn combat and the small-scale tactical choices inside it. By our assessment, that focus is the good part: positioning units, timing abilities, and trying to make a thin roster do real work. The downside is that games built this way live or die on variety, so repetition can show up fast if the maps and mission structure stay narrow. In play it is the kind of game that rewards looking one move ahead more than memorizing big systems. It sits in the pocket between lighter tactics and heavier strategy, which makes it approachable without being trivial. People who like compact battles and steady planning may enjoy it; anyone wanting a long campaign with lots of moving parts will probably look elsewhere.