Since its release Wars and Battles has received quite a positive response from both gamers and critics. Taking the extremely dull game title aside, Wars and Battles is arguably one of the most ambitious tablet strategy games of the year.
I have always been of the opinion that tablets are best suited for strategy games and puzzlers rather than fast action games whose gameplays try to emulate console controllers and force your fingers to block the screen. However, as far as the majority of strategy games is concerned, both the App Store and Google Play have been plagued with freemiums copying the Clash of Clans motif, in which battles are completely off the user’s control. Of course I would never expect any tablet games developer to create a real-time strategy game (RTS) like Age of Empires, which logically wouldn’t be really amazing with all this touch and no mouse, or a Total War, else the table would fry once you opened the app. However, what developers don’t seem to be doing as much is turn-based games. And suddenly, voila! Wars and Battles, is a game that does it right. So let me sit in my Victorian armchair, bring my tablet and my whiskey, light my Churchill-style cigar, and tell you how I won the battle of Normandy.
Developed by Paris-based Battle Factory, and published by Kermorio SA, Wars and Battles is a turn-based wargame which aims to simulate the complex decision making of generals in historic battles throughout human history. As mentioned, its interface is made specifically for tablets, a useful feature for players starting out in turn-based stategy games and old fans of the genre.
Its design reminded me of old tabletop games we used to play, before video games stole our souls, with pawns on a map. However simplistic this may sound, the graphics are greatly designed in both 3d and 2d modes.
According to the company’s press release, the development team has an accumulative 50 years in game development and the company boasts about a century of designing tabletop games. So in effect, Wars and Battles (a name you would only find in tabletop games sold during the 60s) is a well designed 3d tabletop game. Do you remember this one time in Star Wars with Chewbacca, C3PO and R2D2 playing chess inside the Millennium Falcon?
The Gameplay
Did I mention that this is the most ambitious tablet strategy game I have seen this year? Wars and Battles lets players act as generals during historical battles. You can choose to play with either side, and again there is the option of looking at the map in a 2D or a 3D perspective. The gameplay is simple and faithful to any tabletop game which respects itself. It is on a map and involves turns.
Battle Factory has gone above and beyond with the AI, which is always a critical factor to any history-based game. As a result, playing against the computer in the singe-player campaign will result in the multiple scenarios portraying historical events. Terrain of the map, weather conditions, unit types and characteristics, the state of military technology, and your mode of warfare are all taken into account in battle. That said, there are over 20 types of terrain, 400 ground units, and 15 air units. Your troops in each campaign vary since they are based in different periods of human history. Of course, there is also the multiplayer feature with which you can play with friends in different centuries and continents, and alter history as you see fit.
New Campaigns and Extra Content
The development team is constantly updating the game and aims to add new content in due time. Its first campaign, Normandy 1944, gave players the chance to act out the most famous battle of the second World War and featured soldiers and vehicles styled in WW2.
Last month,October War 1973 was added depicting a cornerstone battle in the Arab-Israeli conflict, where massed allied Egyptian and Syrian forces attempted to surprise an inferior Israeli force during the Yom Kippur holiday. The new campaign includes seven free scenarios, with ten advanced scenarios and two grand battles as in-app purchases. You can watch a preview of the Valley of Tears scenario in October War 1973 here: