In strategy games that cover broad swathes of human history, it’s always a bit sad that the Stone Age is, at best, an early game sideshow – something to be breezed past in a couple of technological leaps on the way to better things. Not so with Dawn Of Man, which concentrates on the various something-lithic periods to the exclusion of everything else. In this game, pointy bits of iron, ploughs and cheese are end-game tech.

(more…)

Looking back at it now, 2020 doesn’t feel like a banner year for strategy games, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been a few gems. The list below – gathered by a panel of experts and regularly updated – contains games from as recently as 12 months ago alongside classics from as far back as 28 years ago. They’re all games we think you could play and love right now.

(more…)

For a time it looked as though strategy games had sunk into a kind of deathly malaise, unsure which territory to claim next and which ones it should leave well and truly alone. Fast forward to 2020, though, and strategy games have never looked healthier, which is why we’ve compiled this best strategy games list of all time. Whether you want to conquer the depths of space, wage historical warfare or hulk around in big mechanical robots, there’s a strategy game for you below.

(more…)

You’ll ocassionally find someone on the internet sounding off about how the strategy genre is dead. If you see such a person in the future, send them this list of the best strategy games ever made.

(more…)

Hahaha, I can’t believe you think the game you like is good! The game you like ISN’T good! Your liking the game you like makes you look just SO silly. Find out which games everyone else likes, and then start liking those games instead, with our handy Steam Charts guide.

(more…)

If you go to read the Steam charts this week, you’ll be sure of a big surprise: the best-selling game was little-known, stone age city-builder Dawn Of Man. It had no publisher, its two-person developer was known only for the somewhat under-the-radar colony sim Planetbase, and it hadn’t enjoyed prior coverage from any of the largest sites or streamers. Hell, its official trailer has only accrued 57,000 views since being uploaded in December 2018.

But there it was, a $20 strategy-management game about collecting sticks and randy goats, outselling Plunkbat, GTA 5 and DMC 5.

How could such a thing happen, in an age where breakout hits increasingly only seem to come from massive companies?

(more…)

My lowest ebb in out-of-nowhere city-builder hit Dawn of Man was not when raiders slaughtered 18 of my people while they were calmly picking pears, or when three of my guys collapsed in the snow because I’d ordered them to spend the winter hauling a bus-sized rock across a mountain range (I wanted to build a henge, you see).

No, it was the Great Goat Plague. 43 of the buggers succumbed to some fatal goat lurgy, contracted because my braying friends knocked hooves faster than I could possibly build stables to house all the resultant goatlings. Because they consumed hay faster than a half-dozen grain fields could possibly re-grow. The goat-horde was thus shivering and starving when the frosts came, an open door to some terrible infection, centuries before vets were invented.

There was no cure for the goatpocalypse. It ravaged my prehistoric tribe’s trouser-nibbling livestock. Frankly, it was a relief.

(more…)

I’m nothing if not a hypocrite. Week after week I lament you utterly awful people buying the exact same five games again and again and again and again and again and again> and again. This week I shall lament people buying games that barely even exist. Hold my hand, let me walk you through this most peculiar of weeks, and into oncoming traffic.

(more…)

There’s been a glut of good city-building games lately, but the prehistoric Dawn Of Man flew under my radar until it launched today. Developed by Madruga Works (formerly of space-coloniser Planetbase), it has players leading a tribe of early humans through the ages, hunting wooly mammoths in the Neolithic era and eventually evolving into an Iron Age society. It looks rather clever, and not overly cluttered with numbers and graphs – contrary to what The Flintstones may have taught us, stone-age statisticians were rare. Check out the launch trailer below.

(more…)