Tactera Demo

Strategy games usually require good coordination and fast reflexes, especially those that are played in real time. As such, you only need to think about StarCraft to remember just how demanding it can be to keep up with things like resources, additional bases, upgrades, unit production and enemy harassment. Nonetheless, gamers love a challenge, especially if the results are worth it.

Tactera is defined by the developer as a virtual tabletop real-time strategy game, which is quite the mouthful, but it’s pretty accurate once you start playing and see what it’s all about. Hence, it plays like a basic tower defense game in certain aspects, except that there are two players going head-to-head against each other with similar units and special abilities.

Speaking of which, you start by choosing a couple of units from a list, each one of which has certain special abilities and stats that come in handy on the battlefield. Obviously, some of them are better against certain kind of units, while others are much weaker when it comes to conquering valuable control points. Hence, it’s up to you to decide what combination of units to use.

Since everything takes place in real-time, you need to move quickly, which in this case means moving your head quickly. In order to select something, you have to turn your head and look at the unit/building you want to select, then perform a mouse click. It’s definitely easier than it sounds, but it obviously takes much more effort than a classic mouse selection.

As far as the graphics are concerned, the holographic theme used throughout the game means that everything looks like the wireframe mode has been left on. It certainly looks pretty nice, on the other hand, at least if you do not mind the lack of detail. The perspective is very nice as well, although it’s not that great that you cannot see the whole battlefield without turning your head.

When it’s all said and done, Tactera is on the right path, but it certainly needs more content before it can provide players with multiple hours of entertainment. The graphics need some sort of tweak as well.