Kwarn Armada Tactics Demo

Most real-time strategy games are very similar, or at least they used to be back in the days when the genre was still relevant. Hence, everything revolves around gathering resources, building a base and using your units to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible. Franchises like StarCraft and C&C refined the formula over the years, but it would appear that the genre is not that popular nowadays.

Kwarn Armada Tactics is a real-time strategy game with a different take on the entire thing, given the fact that the whole action is all about the combat itself. You need to think quickly and move your hands just as quickly, because it’s important to send troops on the battlefield with haste and great precision. Thus, it has a pretty steep learning curve, and it never really gets easier.

To begin with, there are multiple generals and factions to choose from, and their available ships differ in terms of abilities as well. Granted, this side is not that important in the demo at hand, because it is mostly designed to provide you with a look at the mechanics themselves. Thus, each battle starts with players having to defend a grid and attack the enemy at the same time.

The game actually resembles Space Invaders most of the time, because you have multiple columns that can be used to attack or defend. If a particular column does not have any ships on it, then the enemy is free to reach you and deal damage. However, you have to manually drag & drop the troops onto the grid, as well as give them attack or defend orders, so you really need to move quickly.

As far as the interface is concerned, everything can be figured out relatively easy, but the difficult part is getting a good look at your ships and their abilities. Since most of the time you only have seconds of thinking time, it’s important to remember which ship does what, and that is not so simple at first. Thankfully, there’s a tutorial to help you with that, but you still need a good memory.

Even if it might scare casual players away from the first few minutes, Kwarn Armada Tactics has a few neat ideas to work with, but they do need a bit of refining first. Hence, you can support the developers by participating in their Kickstarter campaign.