My Top 10 Games of 2016

Man I'm glad 2016 is over but the games were good...

Some years play rough and 2016 was one of those years and I am very happy for it to be over. On the other hand in terms of video games, and only video games, this was a really great year. From a really solid resurgence in the quality of triple A shooters, to the Juggernaut that was Overwatch, and some really solid indie releases, there were actually too many good games for one person to play. Also there was a massive update to DotA 2 this year which is always welcome. So here we go, my top ten games of 2016.

 Honorable Mention - The Final Station

 Of all the games I played this year I had the most intense reaction to The Final Station. Upon completion of this game I set aside my controller, turned off my monitor, not the PC, just the monitor, then I went for a walk around the block. I was moved to this act not by any great aspect of the game’s production or by some jaw dropping set piece but instead by the oppressive weight and bleakness of The Final Station’s world. A dangerous world where even the simplest task can expose you to being torn apart by brutal attackers. A world where infrastructure is crumbling and the people normally trusted with protecting everyone have secretly betrayed the trust of the people. After the way 2016 played out, the bleak outlook of The Final Station resonates even more.

 10 - Pokemon Go

 I am not a Pokemon fan. I fully recognize the good and great qualities of the Pokemon universe, but the games and cartoons have just never done much for me. The runaway success of Pokemon Go demanded that I give the game a shot despite my usual lack of enthusiasm. What I found was a really solid AR experience filled with tons of excuses to get me up and about in the real world and a great new icebreaker to start conversations with people I would otherwise have nothing in common. Oh yeah, and some weak ass Pokemon.

 9 - Reigns

 Reigns is a truly fantastically simple game. Of the two mobile games on this list Reigns is the one that fit into my life the best. In that way Reigns was the anti Pokemon Go; Pokemon Go was the mobile game that changed my routine and Reigns was the game that fit into my routine. When you’re waiting in line for the movies or whatever you can’t go running after that stupid Zapdos. But you know what you can do? You can live the lives of half a dozen Medieval Kings, you can meet the devil in the form of you dog, you can fight skeletons in a dungeon, and even more cool stuff. Also it’s a mobile game that you just pay for up front and it never bothers you for money again, which is always nice.  

 8 - Darkest Dungeon

 Fun fact: for most of my 2015 Extra Life Marathon I was having internet service issues and about the only game I could reliably stream was the early access version of Darkest Dungeon, so I have more than a little experience with the game. The way that every part of The Darkest Dungeon works together to to create a gothic horror landscape is just fantastic. The way the cartoony artstyle contrasts with the animation and sound design is just dissonant enough to be unsettling. The way that the psychological maladies effect the gameplay and can just straight up end a dungeon run or in some cases even end a game is a risky gamble that really adds a sense of tension that works incredibly well with the tone of the game. Ultimately Darkest Dungeon is a really great, creepy, game. Be ready to grind a bit though because you'll definately need to.

 7 - The Banner Saga 2

 In a year when the second entry in the XCOM franchise was a disappointment there was a shining star in the turn based strategy genre and that star was The Banner Saga 2. Where XCOM 2 made the mistake of assuming players had maintained their skills from the first game The Banner Saga 2 eased players back into the combat system with a few easier battles before dialing up the difficulty. It also doesn’t hurt the game that it has some of the best hand drawn style art and animation of any game ever. Bottom line: The banner Saga was the best turn based strategy game released this year and I really like that type of game.

 6 - Overwatch

 I really enjoyed my time with Overwatch this year. Zarya is top tier A-plus defensive tank, and is also just the best. The way that Blizzard has built not just a great multiplayer game but also the UI framework around that game which celebrates every player’s contribution is a great accomplishment. I think that the characters in Overwatch are all really fun as is the game itself. It’s just a shame that there’s really no good single player experience in the game and that the story exists entirely outside the game, and that the community for that game is becoming toxic in spite of some masterful design efforts to combat that. Also shameful is Blizzard's decision to add the worst free to play practice, blind loot boxes with repeats, to a full price retail game. Overwatch is a really great game that is slowly getting worse over time and that’s kind of sad.

 5 - Dark Souls 3

 Dark Souls 3 is my first Souls game so I was unprepared for the absolute savagery with which this game assails players, even in the tutorial. Once I played for a while, though, patterns began to reveal themselves and a game that seemed ferocious at first became simply challenging but fair. The appeal of Souls  games was lost on me for a long time. I couldn’t understand why people were so excited to play blatantly unfair games. Now that I’ve played one I understand that these games aren’t really unfair or even onerously difficult. Souls games simply operate at a different tempo from other games and learning that tempo is the really difficult part of mastering them.

 4 - Stellaris

 Just. One. More. Turn.

Getting you to say that after 8 hours is  the ultimate goal of all games like Stellaris.  What Stellaris offers you that others like it don’t is freedom. Freedom to design your own civ, freedom to find your own way to win the game, freedom to be weird. Games like Stellaris, most notably the Civ series, tend to force players into a few basic strategies. Sure you can try a pacifist playthrough in a Civ game but good luck actually winning or even surviving very long that way. Stellaris has a way of making all playstyles viable by making them all just flawed enough that really drew me in to an extent greater than any other game I played this year. That said I tend to be fairly biased in favor of this type of game in general so it’s not a huge surprise that it affected me this way.

 3 - Doom

 Doom is a game about momentum which is important because that is the way it is different from practically every other game this year. The new hotness in games lately has been agility; letting players flit about the environment hither and thither. Doom ignores this trend, almost with disdain, forcing players to keep their feet mostly planted on the ground but letting them move at unheard of, in recent years, speed across it. What this means is that Doom isn’t a game about not getting blasted so much as it is a game about blasting things. The whole point of the game is to treat enemy encounters the way the Kool-Aid Man treats walls. This isn’t just a return to form to the series because this year’s DOOM added a new piece to the old formula; storytelling. In DOOMs of yore story was an afterthought for the most part. This DOOM, though, actually has a story with a plot and everything and actually interesting supporting cast members. This game even managed to give the “Doom guy” a little bit of a personality and for that alone it will go down as maybe one of the best shooter campaigns ever. In a year where the most popular game is often about five opposing team members finding ways to keep you from killing the sixth Doom is a breath of fresh air, letting you really cut loose against a horde of angry demons released by the worst kind of short sighted corporate greed.

 2 - Hyper Light Drifter

 I’ve said this a lot this year and I’m going to keep on saying it, because apparently it needs to be said. Everyone, play, Hyper Light Drifter. As a medium video games are often criticized, occasionally correctly, for being too over the top. With that being the case Hyper Light Drifter is possibly the exception that proves the rule. Which is to say sublimely simple and quiet but also incredibly fun and engaging. It doesn’t hurt that the game has the what is probably the best pixel art and sprite work in a game since Fez, an amazing synth heavy soundtrack and great sound design overall. The real beautiful aspect of Hyper Light Drifter, though, is the gameplay, specifically the combat. Few things this year have been more satisfying than mastering the combat in Hyper Light Drifter. The combat is just different enough from other similar games to be challenging while being familiar enough to not be off putting. But more than anything about the game it is the quiet  tone of Hyper Light Drifter that impressed me. So what are you waiting for. Go play this game!

 1 - Titanfall 2

 Titanfall 2 is a truly magnificent accomplishment in game design and execution. Every bit of the game is impeccably well done, it looks and sounds amazing, plays like a dream and most importantly is a joy to play. While a lot of games have the kinds of traversal mechanics that Titanfall 2 has, nothing feels like Titanfall 2.  That is what makes this the best game of the year, the way it feels. More than any other aspect of the medium, feel is what defines and differentiates games. In a year where great games were built to make you want to gamble on a loot box or increase accuracy of your favorite GPS app, the relative purity of Titanfall 2 makes it stand out. Instead of trapping players in a restrictive character class Titanfall 2 lets people customize almost every aspect of their multiplayer loadout. The game is even more distinctive on account of its campaign, remember those, which is a masterclass in how to pace mechanics. Titanfall 2 is constantly introducing and discarding new, interesting gameplay mechanics and consequently never gets dull or repetitive. When the mechanical brilliance of the campaign is put together with Titanfall 2’s solid “A boy and his robot” story and one of the year’s standout new characters, BT 7274, and you get, arguably, the best campaign of the year.

As parts of video game industry more and more often leave out parts of their games so they can sell them to us later or add sleazy free to play hooks to games they also expect us to pay for up front, it becomes important to celebrate games for simply being complete experiences on release. Unlike some games on this list Titanfall 2 is at that and more, the best game of the year.  

Who are you and how do you make money online?My name is Joseph and I run AtivaMedia. It’s a social media marketing company that deals with posting for busy business owners, people that need guidance in social media, startups, or people that like to outsource their social media so they can focus on other aspects of the business. When we first launched I gave away 1 month free of social media work. (Still doing that for new sign-ups) We work with the owner of the account as they provide photos for us as we take care of the actual writing part of the post, and the optimized hashtags along with answering any type of engagement that comes our way. We make our money through online subscriptions. We have three packages starting from $89 to $398 billed monthly. We are the first company to do this effectively with our margins and stay true to our word of being on top of customer service, quality content, and answering all questions from our client. Every business account is different and we cater to their demographic. We treat each account like it was our own. We pride ourselves in not using any type of automation and stay true with our organic numbers. We are proud of the 74 clients that are with us. 29 are under the $89 package. 31 are under the $198 package, and 14 are working with us on our $398 package.29 clients x $89 package: $2,58131 clients x $198 package: $6,13814 clients x $398 package: $5,572TOTAL: $14,291PER MONTH EXPENSES:D7 LEAD FINDER: $50MIXMAX: $30HUNTERIO: $50WEBSITE: -$20EMPLOYEE #1: -$400 (SALARIED)EMPLOYEE #2: -$400 (SALARIED)EMPLOYEE #3: -$800 (HOURLY)EMPLOYEE #4: -$600 (SALARIED)MYSELF: -$4,000 (Putting this back into the business, will eventually pay myself once I hit $20,000 in revenue)What does a typical workday look like for you?My workday starts at 5 AM. I’m typically up to around 4:30 AM and I jump in the shower and wake up for the day. I normally start early because we have east coast clients that are already up and going about their day so I like to cater to them as well. I love to be hands-on with clients even though I should try and distance myself to take care of other things throughout the day.First things first I check my email, answer all emails I need to answer and monitor all postings throughout the day that are shipped out to our clients. I make sure to email random clients throughout the day asking them about the posting and seeing if we need to improve on anything. Check our Facebook ads, and start thinking about how we can get more clients through the door.Working from home has its positives and negatives. My eating habits are terrible right now because it's extremely easy to go to McDonald's rather than cook something in the kitchen. The positive at this very moment would be because my wife is pregnant and I can be here for her whenever she needs me. Go to appointments and basically do what I need to do while being super attentive to the business still.The good news about social media marketing is that I can do almost everything off my iPhone 11. Owning a business definitely puts more hours than a regular job. I counted last week on the actual work I do, and everything I do outside of business hours and I’m easily clearing 50 hours a week. It’s always important to reset on this. Taking a day to yourself isn’t going to destroy your business if you have the right people in place to manage it while you take a day to yourself. It’s important to reset after all your brain is a muscle and deserves a day off here and there.Lucky for us AtivaMedia can be done solely online with remote help. This is going to eventually change as we put someone in the office but as of right now all positions are a work from home opportunity which I love, but I’m also looking forward to the part where I have to go into an office Monday through Friday. I really want to be that difference-maker when I start bringing in people. I want work to be fun, as long as we get our work done.What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea for your business?I owned a digital marketing company, and we were dealing with higher-end clients charging from $1,000-$5,000 per month. Dealing with SEO, websites, and reputation management. I always found it kind of crazy that I had social media clients and I was charging them $1500-$2500 when we would just post their content and do the exact same thing as we do in AtivaMedia. So it really inspired me to be different, and even though I’m going to have the negative sayers say “you can’t do that.” “The quality is probably bad.” “It’s too cheap what’s the catch”. I decided I was going to do it anyways and prove that there are good hard working companies out there still.I know social media is on the rise and there is a demand for it, and I basically validated this idea with three packages to help the small business owner, start-up or anyone that needs help with social media for a low price. Once we launched we had 20 businesses sign up within the first week.I had some money through OMG, and I basically put all my eggs into this basket and here we are. I wouldn’t want it any other way. My goal is to eventually have 1,000 businesses under this banner with us, and of course, I need to have things in place before that happens.How did you prepare to launch the business?Getting a website created was easy as I did my last business website, but Incorporating and filing for an EIN number cost a little bit of money ($200). I just needed to have the functionality of a monthly subscription on the website. It’s set up to grab all the business information and then we manually create a dropbox for photos and put all their information into our database so we never forget about this client and make sure the work is being done.As far as breaking down one of our packages. $89 per month will get you 3 posts per week on one social media account. This package is mostly for startups and small businesses or people just wanting to try out our quality before they make the jump on the other packages. In this package we deal with hashtags, writing the post out whether its Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other social media platform and we do our research on the business itself. If the client isn’t happy with the post we decided to pick we work with the owner to get on the right track and we keep working until the owner of the account is happy with the work provided.How much money did you have to spend to get started?Start-up costs where no more than $500. I had a good amount from OMG to start this business and I left the rest of the money for Facebook Ads that have already started. As far as hosting for a website, and buying a domain along with Incorporating the business and opening a bank account I would say this cost $500 or less.Talk us through your first few months (or first-year) in business.I feel doubts come with every business. Did I have doubts that this would succeed? Of course! Who doesn’t? The one thing that really pushed me was the support of my wife. She’s my rock, and without her behind me, this wouldn’t have worked. Obviously people out there might not have a special someone or someone behind them. Just keep pushing. The workload was crazy back then but it’s still crazy as I hammer 50-60 hours a week.When we first launched I got bombarded by request and promised way too much for $89 per month. It was almost impossible to keep up with but I put my head down and stayed true to my word along with refining the packages that we offered. Now everything is running much more smoothly. It's all about finding a balance. I kept all expenses on a spreadsheet, and now, of course, I use Quickbooks but everything seems solid with payroll and other expenses that the company needs to pay out monthly.Now with the change in packages, we still offered quality work regardless if they are on our low package or high package. I’ve been a huge fan of always showing excellent customer service. At the end of the day, people are buying the service you offer. You need to be on top of customer service.The best decision I ever made with this company was hiring people. You will never grow unless you hire people. I’ve always been against hiring but once I finally jumped on it things got easier and it was easier for me to expand the business. Obviously I’m nowhere near where I want to be but I feel slow and steady wins the race.How did you make your first $100 online?My first client was through Yelp. I still remember getting her business. She’s still a client to this day, and making that first $89 was incredible. Almost like an adrenaline shot to the heart. I would go on Yelp or Google and I would look up emails and send them a cold email letting them know of my services and how cheap we were compared to our competitors.I’m a strong believer in word of mouth. You need to knock it out of the park for every customer. If you do you’ll start getting referrals and that’s exactly what started to happen. We weren’t running any type of advertising. Right now we are messing around on Facebook Ads but other than that we aren’t doing anything to drive traffic. The process is a bunch of tools I use from Mixmax, d7leadfinder, and using platforms such as Google and Yelp. I would basically get emails and mass send emails through Mixmax (100 per day) and go from there.Remember to only send 100 per day as if you go over your emails will start going to the spam folder. Please don’t spam people.How does the business make money today?We are targeting people on Facebook that own business right now. We ran a few cold campaigns and are now niching down. Our services are month to month and with the constant posting, businesses love staying with us especially when things are working. Small steps we take on staying above sales and getting more. Staying active on our own social media platforms.As far as making money for the business our recurring customers that let us take care of it for them.If you were starting the same business today, from scratch, how would you do it?You know I love social media marketing, and Id do the same thing I did: website, incorporate and push on Yelp/Google/Ads but if I had a chance to do it all over again, and really start something. I would start a trash can cleaning service.I’ve always been a fan of doing something locally, and potentially growing it to something big. You need to really think about this and hopefully, I can inspire someone here. You need to find something that can make people's lives easier. Who likes cleaning trash cans on a Saturday morning or during the week? Would you pay $30 to have your 3 trash cans washed, cleaned, dried, and smell good? I WOULD.Also, the trash cleaning business might be big in my area because literally no one is doing it. I feel its hard work, and you gotta manage hundreds of clients, but man just talking about it makes me want to do it.What books, podcasts, courses or other resources would you recommend to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?I’ve always been a huge Garyvee fan. Even though some of his stuff is kind of meh. I’m going to be real with you guys here. No matter what, everything takes hard work. Garyvee likes to go to yard sales and buy things to flip on eBay. You need to take into account the time he does this, packaging, shipping, and dealing with disputes along with the weight of the shipment and all these other things along with the material. There is a lot of hard work in flipping.Nothing comes easy in life. Put your head down, read, learn, listen and keep going and you’ll eventually see results. Remember that McDonald's took 30 years to build before someone came in and turned it into a national powerhouse food chain. Things don’t happen overnight.What are your top 5 business tools?WordPressMixmaxHunter.ioD7LeadFinderShopifyGmail

The Best Games like XCOM on Android & iOS

XCOM: Enemy Unknown won multiple game-of-the-year awards in 2012 for its turn-based tactical gameplay centered on a squad of combatants. The expansion, XCOM: Enemy Within, was similarly well received upon its release in 2013 and brought the franchise to the mobile market on both the iOS and Android platforms in 2014. The success of these XCOM games inspired many game developers to try their hand at the genre.

In 2015 we got Deathwatch: Tyranid Invasion, set in the Warhammer 40K universe, and one of my personal favorites Templar Battleforce. We've also Demon's Rise 2  (another Pocket Tactics GOTY recipient) and Invisible, Inc. All of these games feature tactical turn-based action that can be favorably compared to the XCOM games.

Below is collection of great games that evoke that tactical gameplay that XCOM fans know and love. Some we've reviewed, many we haven't. We've put some emphasis on games released in the last couple of years, but also aimed for a good cross-section of options out there. Naturally we can't include every title with gameplay similar to XCOM and would love to see other options called out in the comments below.

Community Suggestions

Deathwatch: Tyranid Invasion

The Banner Saga series

Shieldwall Chronicles

Skulls of the Shogun

Highborn

Xenowar

Developer: Grinning Lizard Platforms: Android Price: $1.99

Xenowar is a brilliant distillation of the razor-sharp tactical challenges of XCOM, though it does sacrifice some scale and endgame satisfaction in favor of presenting a clean-cut intense series of battles. In particular, the GEO mode is a smart compromise between a full-fledged life-consuming, planet-saving, alien-cleansing XCOM campaign and a single strategic arc that a dedicated gamer can accomplish in just a few sittings. It takes a lot of presence of mind to create games like this, which understand what’s great and reiterate it without becoming derivative or redundant in the process. Oh, and it’s open-source to boot.

Strike Team Hydra (Review)

Developer: Wave Light Games Platforms:  iOS | Android Price: $7.99, $6.49

Hydra’s best point is how creative and wide its customization options are, both in terms of squad composition and difficulty level. The plotting and theme are boilerplate, but in terms of mechanics, stats and abilities, the game is brimming with possibilities. Psionics and physics add some flair and unusual effects to the classes, and the enemies are weird bio-machine hybrids. All this wouldn’t matter a whit if the game’s buffet of options was paired with anything but an equally rich campaign. Here, Strike Team Hydra delivers again, ratcheting up the scenarios, objectives and enemy types just as generously as it doled out strategic tools. It strikes a great balance between question and answer; risk and reward; problem and solution.

Frozen Synapse

Developer: Mode 7 Platforms: Android Price: $9.99, $4.31

Along with the top-down isometric perspective, Frozen Synapse made one other amazing change to the standard tactical shooter formula. Each side takes turns planning their actions in secrecy, mapping out the steps their units will take, the shots they will fire. Then the game will resolve everyone’s programmed actions creating a ‘simultaneous’ turn that was nonetheless meticulously choreographed by those tacticians. One good idea, perfectly rendered, is enough to make a good game. Frozen Synapse fulfills this crystal-clear ideal.

Templar Battleforce (Review)

Developer: Trese Brothers Platforms:  iOS | Android Price: $9.99

Space marines versus xenomorphs, loosely derived from the Ur-horrors of Alien. Templar Battleforce owes some thematic debts to Warhammer and others, but its rapid-fire pacing and generous respect system are wonderful tools for experimentation and strategy. There’s some light characterization and world-building, sure, but in lieu of story one has to respect Templar Battleforce’s varied scenarios and equally creative squads allow divergent thinking. To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail, but to a commander with endlessly variable squads, the mutating threat can be met with an equally sundry...battleforce.

Aliens versus Humans

Developer: Leisurerules Inc. Platforms:  iOS | Android Price: $2.99

We'll start with an option that predates Enemy Within on mobile. Aliens versus Humans is an old game. So old that if you buy it for iOS you'll get the warning about it slowing down your device since the developer hasn't updated the game to Apple's standards. That warning is often meaningless and misleading and you should go ahead and ignore it in this case. 

Aliens versus Humans is effectively a clone of the very first XCOM game from back in 1994.It features base management, research, manufacturing, and of course tactical combat against alien enemies. The graphics are retro and nothing to get excited about, but the gameplay is solid, combat is challenging, and there's a whole lot of content for a couple bucks. You can bring a huge squad to battle which allows for more options to face threats than games that top out with a team of four or so. It also lets you play the attrition game to grind out victories. So while Aliens versus Humans is over three-years-old at this point, it is well worth considering if you're looking for XCOM-like action.

Alien Star Menace

Developer: The Animal Farm Creations Platforms: Android Price: Free

The first of a couple free options in this article is a little game called Alien Star Menace. Aliens have attacked the starship Paladin and it's up to you to save the day. Alien Star Menace is light-hearted and looks pretty basic at first glance but it actually packs a good tactical punch. You pick a five-person squad from a variety of special units with different pros and cons and take them into missions on different levels of the Paladin.

The mission objectives are things like "Kill Everything" and "Reach the Stairs" and the game rewards smart decisions like making good use of choke points and ranged attackers. Missions are very quick and perfect for bite-sized play sessions on your phone, which is often a big plus for gamers these days. Alien Star Menace is also free-to-play with no IAP. There are ads, which can be annoying, but the frequency is very low and I didn't find them to be overly obtrusive. I'm happy to recommend this one as a free gaming option for XCOM fans.

World of Warriors: Quest

Developer: Mind Candy Ltd. Platforms:  iOS | Android Price: Free

World of Warriors: Quest is a light turn-based tactical game where you play as a team of warriors from across the ages—Roman centurions, Viking berserkers, and stealthy ninjas for example. The characters fill your standard RPG roles. The Roman, Brutus, is a tank and taunts enemies with his attacks to keep their attention. Gunnar, the Viking warrior, is a decent balance of damage and survivability. The ninja is named Kuro and he's the glass cannon—big area-of-effect damage but very low health. Those are the starting characters but you encounter more as the game goes on.

You choose three warriors to take on a number of quests that lead you across the Wildlands on a mission to discover what the local bad guys are up to. Each quest has several waves of fights and it can be a challenge to keep your team upright and alive so you don't succumb to attrition. Each warrior has special attacks to make use of and there are also consumables֫ that recover health, enable big attacks, or provide extra movement speed. World of Warriors: Quest is not a particularly deep game, but good for those interested in light squad-based tactics. You also can't beat the price—this one is free with no IAPs or ads.

The Last Warlock

Developer: Sonic Sloth Platforms:  iOS | Android Price: $3.99

The Last Warlock is a turn-based tactical game with a somewhat unique almost-anything-goes approach. You play as a warlock capable of summoning deadly creatures, casting magical spells, and crafting weapons, armour, and other equipment. You embark on a series of quests to find and defeat enemy warlocks, all vying to discover the secrets of the famed last warlock. To defeat these rivals you must first best their monsters, traps, and puzzles before taking them down.

The Last Warlock provides an extraordinary amount of freedom for a tactical game to decide exactly how to do so. You can go straight for your foe or explore a little and take the road less travelled. This provides a great deal of replay value because you can play the same quest multiple times and use a different strategy. Your squad in this game are the creatures you've summoned and you can end up with quite a crew as you grow in power and a quest wears on. The single-player campaign is quite extensive and will provide many hours of play for one premium price. There's also an asynchronous online option for those looking for multiplayer action.

Star Chindy (2016)

Developer: MAST Games Platforms: Android Price: $1.99

Star Chindy mixes in elements of both FTL and XCOM. You warp around the galaxy in your ship, the Star Chindy, in a hunt to take on and take out a big bad alien race that very nearly wiped out earth. You'll maintain and upgrade your ship, and others you pick up along the way, and decide where to go and what risks are worth taking in your travels.

You'll take a squad on various away missions and engage the enemy in turn-based tactical warfare. The missions are a good challenge and get better and better as you train up your squad. The space-based combat is less interesting, however. It plays out in real time, rather than being turn based, and your weapons auto-fire on enemy ships in range. Your job is to frantically maneuver your ships to avoid enemy fire. Luckily the fun of the squad combat more than makes up for this and despite this odd dichotomy, Star Chindy is definitely worth a go for fans of XCOM.

Do you know of any more games that would fit the topic of today's guide? Let us know about them in the comments below!

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Bringing the Future to the Table: Tabletop Games You Should Be Excited About for 2018

2017 was a pretty banner year for board games, with solid releases like Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate and the announcement of cool new projects like Fallout’s own tabletop game. And it feels like the industry itself is having a great renaissance of amazing ideas that any tabletop gamer should be excited for. But even more so, creators in the Shapeways community have shown time and time again that they can take these games and make them better.

There are a ton of great things happening in the 2018, but today I just want to bring your attention to just a few of the really cool things we know for sure are either happening or will be part of the cultural zeitgeist for this year. I’m incredibly excited, and I hope it rubs off, because these things have me really amped up for the new year in tabletop games.

Lay Waste(Land) to Your Table

via Modiphius

As I mentioned before, the announcement of a tabletop version of the Fallout universe being put together by renowned TTG company Modiphius felt too good to be true. Then I looked at the miniatures, and I knew it was too good to be true. However, despite all my self-assurance that something this awesome couldn’t possibly exist in a world this damaged, Fallout: Wasteland Warfare is getting ready to drop in March 2018.

While the original release date was November 2017, it’s not like Modiphius has kept a lid on what exactly they’re working on. If you’ve been keeping tabs on their Instagram like I have, you’ve seen the new updates and character models that the designers keep steadily releasing for our hungry eyes to gobble up. For any tabletop gamer who’s also a fan of the Fallout series, this game is pretty much the greatest thing ever. Pre-orders are available now, so pick it up today and get ready to turn your game room into a post-apocalyptic wasteland!

D&D’s Mainstream Critical Saving Throw

Celtic Dice Set by eondesigner

If you’re a fan of Stranger Things or other shows like Harmon Quest, then you know that Dungeons and Dragons is coming back in a big way (and the Shapeways designer community is so, so ready). Shows like this have been popping up around the new media landscape, leading many to hear a bit more about D&D than they ever thought they would in the 21st century. After all, the game got a really tone-deaf movie back in the ’90s starring Jeremy Irons alongside Shawn Wayans, so wouldn’t that give it license to just kind of limp away into obscurity?

I’m here to tell you, with a gleam of childlike glee in my eyes: Nope!

Actually, D&D is getting a new movie and I’m praying to Bahamut it’s handled a bit better than the last one. However, that’s neither here nor there. What is definitely both here and worthy of your attention is how much fun the Internet is having with the classic game once again. Shows like Save or Dice, Critical Role and Dice, Camera, Action! have made pen-and-paper RPGs no longer a stereotypical activity nerds did in their basements. Here, they’re playing it for all of the world to see, and it’s incredibly engaging. Dungeon Masters craft worlds for players to inhabit, and those players breathe life into their characters and have amazing adventures. It beats the hell out of daytime TV, that’s for sure.

Sure, this all is doing a ton for D&D’s brand presence, but what I’m really interested in is the hope that this resurgence of one of the most iconic tabletop RPGs out there leads to a trickle-down effect of new players trying more games like it in the future, bringing more new blood to the TTG community. And if some just end up sticking with D&D, that’s fine too. There’s a mystical peddler in the Shapeways Marketplace that they need to meet.

The Greatest Action Movie of All Time Is Getting Its Own Board Game. You May Freak Out Now.

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There are some that may say that Big Trouble in Little China isn’t the greatest action movie of all time. While those people are wrong, I can still respect their opinion (I guess). However, you can still smugly look them in the face and ask: “Where’s your John Wick board game?”

BTiLC: The Game looks like a mash-up between stat-based dungeon crawler board games like Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate and Munchkin. However, the writing and quests you complete have the same braggadocio-laden tone and swagger that ol’ Jack Burton himself has. Pit yourself against the minions of Lo-Pan and save Little China (and the world). Or die trying and literally go to hell and back to complete your quest. Either way, it’s going to be one awesome ride. Expect Big Trouble in Little China: The Game sometime in the next couple months.

Creators, tabletop gamers, citizens of the Internet — with just three points, I’ve highlighted a small taste of the greatness 2018 has to offer: traversing the wastelands once more at my game room table, getting way too into D&D, and watching a grown man’s head explode in the back alleys of Little China. With so much more yet unannounced, so much more out there just waiting for the right opportunity to land on our collective radars, I’m incredibly excited to see what’s next.

What about you all? Do you have a game or other rumbling in the tabletop universe you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear about it. Until next time, happy gaming, and happy creating!

  The post Bringing the Future to the Table: Tabletop Games You Should Be Excited About for 2018 appeared first on Shapeways Magazine.

Bringing the Future to the Table: Tabletop Games You Should Be Excited About for 2018 published first on http://ift.tt/2vVn0YZ

Wayhome 2017

Just as I did last year, a long sprawling post covering everything I loved and liked last weekend at Wayhome. Mostly for myself to look back on in time but also to share the love of great music. None of the videos linked here are mine – the photos are.

 Highs:

The People – This was only the third year of Wayhome, hopefully not the last (more on that later) but it seemed to me that people were starting to get the hang of the weekend camping festival this year. There were a lot more high fives, a fair bit of “Happy Wayhome”, evidence of neighboring campsites keeping an eye out for each other and just all around good vibes. This is even more so on our own campsite where with our camp mates from the US we had as much or more fun sitting around the campsite as there was in the festival grounds.

The Beer on our Campsite – This was mostly of our own planning and preparation  but it was one of my best weekends ever in terms of sampling new craft beers. I had made sure to get a few good/unique beers before we left, our American friends brought some great beers from the Buffalo area and we participated in an onsite craft beer exchange where we traded 10 of our own beers for 10 unique craft beers – mostly from the East Coast of Canada. There was a lot of beer to go around for sure but it was mostly being shared communally among our group of 4, so it went a pretty long way…

Cage the Elephant - Not necessarily my favourite band of the weekend heading in but they put on one hell of a show. Their front man is energetic, engaged and all over the stage. They have a lot of big singalongs and their folkier hits (“Trouble”, “Cigarette Daydreams”) really come across well in a large group setting. It wasn’t quite last years’ Foals revelation, but it was pretty close.

Justice – I’m obviously more of a rock guy than an electronic/dance fan but Justice straddles the line enough for me to be really into their set. This was the best “show” of the weekend, without a doubt. Big lights, epic sounds – they don’t come around much at all and it really felt like an “event” to me – much more than Frank Ocean, whose appearance actually was an event. It’s hard for me to imagine a better song from any band to open a concert than “Safe and Sound”.

The Darcy’s – I had seen them play last year at the ArtWalk at Wayhome and they were good but didn’t blow me away. Since then, I’ve come to realize that their 2016 album Centerfold is a really good synthy-summer in Miami style album. They played at 3:30 in the afternoon in the blazing sun, not far from a Bacardi tent. Sipping on my Lemonade (and Bacardi) in the blazing heat, listening to them play the likes of “Studio City”, “San Diego, 1988” and “Miracle” was everything I wanted to do in that moment. The lead singer had a broken arm and the sling was bright gold and bedazzled – what more can you want.

PUP – Their 2016 album The Dream is Over is just ridiculously good and I knew going in that this was going to be one of the highlights of the weekend. One of the very very few bands that gets me into the mosh pit, they’re just so high energy and so infectious, you just can’t help but get swept up in it. It was different than seeing them in a club – the security at Wayhome was a bit more uptight about the crowd surfing etc… but at the same time, you’re not going to see their lead singer climb to the top of the posts surrounding the stage at a club stage either. There is no better set closer than the “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You/DVP” combination. “Resevoir” was pretty great too.

The Shins – Their setlist was exactly what I wanted it to be – lots from their first two albums, as well as “Simple Song”, “Australia” and “Phantom Limb”, and the obligatory songs from the new album, which are pretty strong in their own right. They sounded tight, had one of the best backdrops of the night and all in all just put in a really great festival set.

Imagine Dragons – Probably the surprise of the weekend for me. I knew their songs like everyone does but mostly shrugged them off as a headliner – after the likes of The Killers, Arcade Fire, Neil Young and LCD Soundsystem the past couple years, they just didn’t meet that level for me. That said, their set was every bit the headlining show. It was an hour and a half of singalongs, positivity and infectious happiness and it was fantastic. He never stops moving around the stage and he looks like an MMA fighter but it all works. Sure, there were possibly some religious undertones to it but as a diehard Killers fan, I can’t hold that against them too much – I’ll just chalk it up to them both being from Las Vegas. In any event, they made me a… Believer

Traffic Flow/Viewpoints – There were much fewer people there this year – fewer bands and smaller headliners will do that. There was one less stage as well. While those were negatives coming in represented less value for the cost of the ticket, it meant it was very easy to move from stage to stage to catch every act we wanted to see, and especially for the sets early on in the day, get very close to the front.

Royal Blood – I had heard they were very good live and they definitely lived up to that reputation. The songs were tight, loud and they were pretty good at getting the crowd feeling in – not always easy for a 2 piece band.

Vance Joy - Maybe somewhat similar to Imagine Dragons, I knew a lot of his songs and I have long loved “Fire and the Flood”. This seemed to be the most child/family friendly set of the weekend and also very heavily populated with screaming/swooning young women. And for good reason – a handsome guy with an Australian accent singing nothing but love songs. He definitely won me over – I was swooning myself (and sending love texts back home) by the time he was a few songs in. As far as love lyrics go, not much better than “Everything is fine, when your head’s resting to mine” in my books.

WayAway Stage – This stage isn’t new this year but it’s the first year I’ve seen a significant number of shows on it (probably many of these would have been on the WayBold stage which didn’t exist this year). Seeing the likes of PUP, Car Seat Headrest, Houndmouth and Haerts on a small stage surrounded by trees was a fantastic experience – if you didn’t want to be up front, you could lean against a tree or sit in the shade – though for most of these bands, up front was the place to be.

Houndmouth/”Sedona” – We were debating among ourselves what the biggest singalong song of the festival was this weekend. Was it “DVP” by PUP? For our group, probably but not for the masses. Was it “Ivy” by Frank Ocean? For many maybe but judging by the people leaving that set, maybe not. “Radioactive” or “Believer” by Imagine Dragons? Objectively, probably yes, but in the moment, tucked away on the WayAway stage with a small but very energetic crowd, “Sedona” by Houndmouth felt like the biggest song of the weekend. Everyone was belting it out for all they had, myself included. Their whole set was fantastic, but this was the moment.

San Fermin - This is a big band (8 members), with a lot happening on stage and two different singers playing a variety of different styles. There are a lot of ways it could not work but they really sounded great and pulled off both the more indie rock oriented and the poppier, electro-influenced tunes very well.

Tegan and Sara – I didn’t watch this whole set, they overlapped with Car Seat Headrest, but what I saw was really good. This is the second time I’ve caught the back half of one of their shows (when they played Peterborough MusicFest, I raced down after my baseball game). This show seemed better, probably because they have new songs like “U-Turn” and “Boyfriend” which are among the very best in their catalog. I did see both those songs, as well as “Nineteen” and “Closer” they were fantastic – need to see a full show soon.

Breakfast - This year we brought eggs for breakfast, which were scrambled and combined with a tortilla shell, sausage and salsa for a wonderful breakfast wrap every morning. The more camping festivals we go to, the better the onsite food preparation gets.

Mitski - She has almost no stage presence, it’s basically her and her bandmate playing songs, with little banter and nothing to draw you in. But the songs are just so damn good and they pop live. Her big guitars and sweet voice played very well for me, despite the lack of movement or banner  or engagement of any sort on stage.

BANKS – Because of Mitski’s show, I only caught the back half of this show and I was towards the back. Her stage presence and her songs are undeniable. The choreography and backup dancers make it a real show – I feel like I need to see her again, closer to the front and the full show to properly appreciate it.

Phantogram/Haerts/The Naked and Famous – All very solid, if not particularly memorable synth-pop-rock acts to get the weekend started on Friday. Haerts were my first show of the weekend and they were a great way to get things going in a positive direction. I had the highest hopes for Phantogram and it was a very good, if somewhat emotionless show. The Naked and Famous played the hits I wanted (“Young Blood”, “Girls Like You”, “Higher”). No complaints.

The Dirty Nil – Good hard rock band. This set was so short (30 mins) and we probably missed the first 5 minutes (or at least only heard it from afar as we entered the grounds). They were solid and one of the few true pure rock bands here this weekend.

Porta Potties – They were pretty clean, pumped regularly, no complaints

Food Lines – This was a complaint last year, so I have to give big ups here – no lines, great options for food – sure smaller crowds helped but still, props.

24 Hour Area – There were two of them and both had Pizza Pizza and poutine options. You’re basically only here after 1 AM and at that point, beggars can’t be choosers and let’s be honest, pizza or poutine is probably what you’re craving after a day full of beer.

  Lows/Disappointments

Death From Above – This was a pretty underwhelming set for me. I’d seen them in Toronto at Riot Fest in 2014, right around the time “Trainwreck 1979” came out and that show was amazing. This time around, they didn’t seem to have the same energy (maybe it was the smaller crowd?), didn’t have the best setlist and really didn’t compare favourably to fellow 2-piece rock band Royal Blood who played immediately after them.

Car Seat Headrest – It isn’t fair to call this a low, it was a very good set by a super talented guy – he even wrote a song called “Oro-Medonte” in honour of where the festival was being held – and his band. It just felt a little slow to me compared to the album versions of the songs. I get that the slacker vibe is part of their shtick but there really isn’t much to this show, which combined with the slowed down tunes and weak-ish playlist, didn’t live up to my expectations (this was probably my 2nd or 3rd most anticipated show of the weekend).

Value vs. Previous Years – It has to be said that we paid the same as last year for fewer bands, worse headliners, worse sub-headliners and one less stage. The shows each day started an hour later and ended an hour earlier. The overall value of the weekend for me is still there because I loved every second I was there, saw amazing bands and was in my element the entire time and there really isn’t a similar camping festival within a few hours of our area, so I will always go back, but it did feel like we were paying the same (more?) for much less in comparison to the first two years.

Canadian Content – Similar to the above, this means not to disrespect the bands that were there this year – as you can see above, PUP, The Darcy’s, Tegan and Sara were among my favourite acts, but 2016 alone had Arcade Fire, Arkells, Mac DeMarco, Wolf Parade, Stars, Half Moon Run, etc… and 2015 had Neil Young, Hey Rosetta, The Rural Alberta Advantage, July Talk, Alvvays, Yukon Blonde, Sloan, Metz, Dear Rouge, Chad VanGaalen and more. You would think the one area Wayhome would have a distinct advantage over it’s U.S. competitors is being able to book these Canadian bands that presumably cost less and are less impacted by the exchange rate but are big draws here north of the border – I just don’t get why they cut back in this area this year.

Crowd Size – The crowd size was a high when it was letting me get to the front of the stage to see a show and letting me move from one stage to another. It is a low in that it means the festival may not return for a 4th year. It also meant the singalongs weren’t as epic, the pits weren’t as bumping and it has to affect the performers to some extent. To say there were half as many people as there were in 2016 would be very generous – and that’s with them giving away a ticket to anyone willing to take one in the weeks leading up to the festival, which leads to...

Everyone and their brother getting a free ticket – I get it – they needed to get people on site to try to recoup some money from lost ticket sales in the form of people with free passes buying beer or food or merchandise but it still sucks that they gave literally anyone in Barrie/Orillia who wanted them free weekend passes and also held an “Everyone’s a Winner” contest in the weeks leading up to the festival through Hive. Maybe without these people on site, the festival doesn’t happen at all, but I paid a couple hundred dollars for my weekend pass and have all three years – it’s weak that the guy beside me likely got in for free.

Frank Ocean/Leaving Frank Ocean – I’ll preface this by saying that I like but don’t love Frank Ocean’s music, I respect him tremendously as a musician and I absolutely love “Ivy”, “Novacaine” and “Pyramids”.

The set was odd – he is not afraid to get halfway through a song, decide he’s unhappy with it and start over from the beginning. He spends a lot of time talking to someone in his headset? That none of us can hear or see onstage. The stage setup is minimal and it is an “unplugged” set up to the show. The visuals are being recorded through an old school device and are unique and different and disarming. We sat towards the back of the Wayhome stage, allowing the diehards the area towards the front of the stage. The songs mostly sounded pretty good. It is slow/minimal R & B so it can be hard to stay in it if you don’t really love the song. By about the halfway point of the show, from our perspective at the back, we saw a lot of people leaving the show. That took me out of it. Him restarting songs took me out of it. He played “Ivy” and that was enough for me – we’d seen an hour or so and seen my favourite and I was happy to go at that point – I’d seen his setlists and knew he wasn’t going to play “Pyramids” anyway and half our group had already left.

Then, walking back to the campsite, I heard the unmistakeable sounds of him playing “Pyramids”. It might have been my least favourite show of the festival but I feel like had I been into it more, closer to the big crowd, not seeing everyone else walking out on it and staying to the end, it could have been one of my favourites. Looking online after, it was a pretty polarizing set, you love it or hate it and I think I loved it and hated it as well.

Lack of Indie Rock – I wasn’t expecting them to match the 2016 trip of Arcade Fire/Killers/LCD but after that, and a sub card including Haim/Foals/Chvrches/M83/The Arcs/Arkells/Wolf Parade/Last Shadow Puppets/Nathaniel Rateliif/Kurt Vile/Stars and much much more, to take a hard left turn away from indie rock and towards more EDM type bands was pretty unexpected. I did not pre buy a “Midnight Madness” ticket before the lineup was announced but I really do feel for people who bought based on 2016’s lineup and then were handed Marshmellow, Flume and the like. The lineup still had lots to love and I like my share of pop and electronic influenced music but it wasn’t what I’d come to expect based on the lineups of the first two years.

Beer in Festival Grounds – I’ve whined about this the past two years as well where the only options were Coors Light, Canadian and Creemore Original. I mean, Creemore is fine in a pinch but there are so many good craft breweries within 90 minutes of this festival and it’s a young, indie rock, dare I say Hipster crowd who would soak up any craft beer options. Festivals like Bonnaroo bring in a craft beer tent with 30 different brewers and craft options at every beer stand. So what does WayHome do for 2017? They take away the Creemore option!? I guess Molson pays big money to sponsor and get that exclusivity, so congratulations Molson, you drove me to drink Somersby and Bacardi in the grounds all weekend. I hope you play no part in their distribution. In any case, they taste much better than Canadian or Coors Light.

All in all, a fantastic weekend, I hope they find a way to bring it back next year and get it back to where it was for year 2 in terms of the lineup and crowds. In terms of the logistics, spirit and people it keeps getting better. If not (and maybe even if so), perhaps 2018 is the year I finally get to Bonnaroo.

The Best Games like XCOM on Android & iOS

XCOM: Enemy Unknown won multiple game-of-the-year awards in 2012 for its turn-based tactical gameplay centered on a squad of combatants. The expansion, XCOM: Enemy Within, was similarly well received upon its release in 2013 and brought the franchise to the mobile market on both the iOS and Android platforms in 2014. The success of these XCOM games inspired many game developers to try their hand at the genre.

In 2015 we got Deathwatch: Tyranid Invasion, set in the Warhammer 40K universe, and one of my personal favorites Templar Battleforce. We've also Demon's Rise 2  (another Pocket Tactics GOTY recipient) and Invisible, Inc. All of these games feature tactical turn-based action that can be favorably compared to the XCOM games.

Below is collection of great games that evoke that tactical gameplay that XCOM fans know and love. Some we've reviewed, many we haven't. We've put some emphasis on games released in the last couple of years, but also aimed for a good cross-section of options out there. Naturally we can't include every title with gameplay similar to XCOM and would love to see other options called out in the comments below.

Community Suggestions

Deathwatch: Tyranid Invasion

The Banner Saga series

Shieldwall Chronicles

Skulls of the Shogun

Highborn

Xenowar

Developer: Grinning Lizard Platforms: Android Price: $1.99

Xenowar is a brilliant distillation of the razor-sharp tactical challenges of XCOM, though it does sacrifice some scale and endgame satisfaction in favor of presenting a clean-cut intense series of battles. In particular, the GEO mode is a smart compromise between a full-fledged life-consuming, planet-saving, alien-cleansing XCOM campaign and a single strategic arc that a dedicated gamer can accomplish in just a few sittings. It takes a lot of presence of mind to create games like this, which understand what’s great and reiterate it without becoming derivative or redundant in the process. Oh, and it’s open-source to boot.

Strike Team Hydra (Review)

Developer: Wave Light Games Platforms:  iOS | Android Price: $7.99, $6.49

Hydra’s best point is how creative and wide its customization options are, both in terms of squad composition and difficulty level. The plotting and theme are boilerplate, but in terms of mechanics, stats and abilities, the game is brimming with possibilities. Psionics and physics add some flair and unusual effects to the classes, and the enemies are weird bio-machine hybrids. All this wouldn’t matter a whit if the game’s buffet of options was paired with anything but an equally rich campaign. Here, Strike Team Hydra delivers again, ratcheting up the scenarios, objectives and enemy types just as generously as it doled out strategic tools. It strikes a great balance between question and answer; risk and reward; problem and solution.

Frozen Synapse

Developer: Mode 7 Platforms: Android Price: $9.99, $4.31

Along with the top-down isometric perspective, Frozen Synapse made one other amazing change to the standard tactical shooter formula. Each side takes turns planning their actions in secrecy, mapping out the steps their units will take, the shots they will fire. Then the game will resolve everyone’s programmed actions creating a ‘simultaneous’ turn that was nonetheless meticulously choreographed by those tacticians. One good idea, perfectly rendered, is enough to make a good game. Frozen Synapse fulfills this crystal-clear ideal.

Templar Battleforce (Review)

Developer: Trese Brothers Platforms:  iOS | Android Price: $9.99

Space marines versus xenomorphs, loosely derived from the Ur-horrors of Alien. Templar Battleforce owes some thematic debts to Warhammer and others, but its rapid-fire pacing and generous respect system are wonderful tools for experimentation and strategy. There’s some light characterization and world-building, sure, but in lieu of story one has to respect Templar Battleforce’s varied scenarios and equally creative squads allow divergent thinking. To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail, but to a commander with endlessly variable squads, the mutating threat can be met with an equally sundry...battleforce.

Aliens versus Humans

Developer: Leisurerules Inc. Platforms:  iOS | Android Price: $2.99

We'll start with an option that predates Enemy Within on mobile. Aliens versus Humans is an old game. So old that if you buy it for iOS you'll get the warning about it slowing down your device since the developer hasn't updated the game to Apple's standards. That warning is often meaningless and misleading and you should go ahead and ignore it in this case. 

Aliens versus Humans is effectively a clone of the very first XCOM game from back in 1994.It features base management, research, manufacturing, and of course tactical combat against alien enemies. The graphics are retro and nothing to get excited about, but the gameplay is solid, combat is challenging, and there's a whole lot of content for a couple bucks. You can bring a huge squad to battle which allows for more options to face threats than games that top out with a team of four or so. It also lets you play the attrition game to grind out victories. So while Aliens versus Humans is over three-years-old at this point, it is well worth considering if you're looking for XCOM-like action.

Alien Star Menace

Developer: The Animal Farm Creations Platforms: Android Price: Free

The first of a couple free options in this article is a little game called Alien Star Menace. Aliens have attacked the starship Paladin and it's up to you to save the day. Alien Star Menace is light-hearted and looks pretty basic at first glance but it actually packs a good tactical punch. You pick a five-person squad from a variety of special units with different pros and cons and take them into missions on different levels of the Paladin.

The mission objectives are things like "Kill Everything" and "Reach the Stairs" and the game rewards smart decisions like making good use of choke points and ranged attackers. Missions are very quick and perfect for bite-sized play sessions on your phone, which is often a big plus for gamers these days. Alien Star Menace is also free-to-play with no IAP. There are ads, which can be annoying, but the frequency is very low and I didn't find them to be overly obtrusive. I'm happy to recommend this one as a free gaming option for XCOM fans.

World of Warriors: Quest

Developer: Mind Candy Ltd. Platforms:  iOS | Android Price: Free

World of Warriors: Quest is a light turn-based tactical game where you play as a team of warriors from across the ages—Roman centurions, Viking berserkers, and stealthy ninjas for example. The characters fill your standard RPG roles. The Roman, Brutus, is a tank and taunts enemies with his attacks to keep their attention. Gunnar, the Viking warrior, is a decent balance of damage and survivability. The ninja is named Kuro and he's the glass cannon—big area-of-effect damage but very low health. Those are the starting characters but you encounter more as the game goes on.

You choose three warriors to take on a number of quests that lead you across the Wildlands on a mission to discover what the local bad guys are up to. Each quest has several waves of fights and it can be a challenge to keep your team upright and alive so you don't succumb to attrition. Each warrior has special attacks to make use of and there are also consumables֫ that recover health, enable big attacks, or provide extra movement speed. World of Warriors: Quest is not a particularly deep game, but good for those interested in light squad-based tactics. You also can't beat the price—this one is free with no IAPs or ads.

The Last Warlock

Developer: Sonic Sloth Platforms:  iOS | Android Price: $3.99

The Last Warlock is a turn-based tactical game with a somewhat unique almost-anything-goes approach. You play as a warlock capable of summoning deadly creatures, casting magical spells, and crafting weapons, armour, and other equipment. You embark on a series of quests to find and defeat enemy warlocks, all vying to discover the secrets of the famed last warlock. To defeat these rivals you must first best their monsters, traps, and puzzles before taking them down.

The Last Warlock provides an extraordinary amount of freedom for a tactical game to decide exactly how to do so. You can go straight for your foe or explore a little and take the road less travelled. This provides a great deal of replay value because you can play the same quest multiple times and use a different strategy. Your squad in this game are the creatures you've summoned and you can end up with quite a crew as you grow in power and a quest wears on. The single-player campaign is quite extensive and will provide many hours of play for one premium price. There's also an asynchronous online option for those looking for multiplayer action.

Star Chindy (2016)

Developer: MAST Games Platforms: Android Price: $1.99

Star Chindy mixes in elements of both FTL and XCOM. You warp around the galaxy in your ship, the Star Chindy, in a hunt to take on and take out a big bad alien race that very nearly wiped out earth. You'll maintain and upgrade your ship, and others you pick up along the way, and decide where to go and what risks are worth taking in your travels.

You'll take a squad on various away missions and engage the enemy in turn-based tactical warfare. The missions are a good challenge and get better and better as you train up your squad. The space-based combat is less interesting, however. It plays out in real time, rather than being turn based, and your weapons auto-fire on enemy ships in range. Your job is to frantically maneuver your ships to avoid enemy fire. Luckily the fun of the squad combat more than makes up for this and despite this odd dichotomy, Star Chindy is definitely worth a go for fans of XCOM.

Do you know of any more games that would fit the topic of today's guide? Let us know about them in the comments below!

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