Real-time tactics games have had a resurgence over the past five years, and that can be almost entirely credited to Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun. It's a gorgeous Commandos-style stealth-and-stab 'em up set during Edo period Japan. It's also currently free via the Epic Games Store.

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The developers at Mimimi Productions who brought us the quite good stealth tactics game Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun and Desperados 3 are, surprise of surprises, working on another real-time tactics game. It’ll be a while before the project codenamed “süßkartoffel” or “sweet potato” reaches our hands, but Mimimi have confirmed that it is indeed the next game on their docket.

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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.

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Kalypso Media have set up an internal studio to make a new Commandos game with the rights they bought last year. This is good news.

My two year-old brain hadn’t developed to the point where it could enjoy sneaky shooting in Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines back in ’98, or in any of its sequels, but my brain’s more advanced form did adore Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun. Tim Stone lavished his Shadow Tactics review with Commandos 2 comparisons, so I’m hoping this will be up my street.

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My main memory of Desperados is repeatedly getting shot and not understanding why. That’s because I tried to play it when I was eight, not because it was impenetrable or confusing. I’m simply making you aware that Desperados was before my time, and so based on my hands on with Desperados III I can’t tell you whether it’s living up that legacy.

It’s from the same team that made Shadow Tactics though, and I can tell from the little I’ve played this absolutely lives up to that.

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Today’s Humble Caffeine Bundle is chock full of very good games for very little money, but a little hard to categorise. United under the banner of Caffeine – a “social broadcasting platform for gaming”, not the life-giving stimulant – there’s eight games here, each one representing a wildly different genre. We’ve got the Metroidy Headlander, platform roguelike Gonner, party game tank shooter Treadnauts, a historical novel adaptation and even a ninja stealth sim all up in here. There’s only (in my opinion) one game that’s not immediately worth your attention. See the full lineup and trailers below.

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While it still bears some reputation as a scrappy little browser-game toolset (and that’s no bad thing – it enabled much of the GMTK 2018 jam recently), ubiquitous game development platform Unity has spread to all corners. While I> don’t have a single creative bone in my body, the Humble Unity Bundle contains a pile of Unity tools and assets to build your dream game. Even if you’re not the creative type, there’s some good Unity-based games in here too, including ninja sneak ’em up Shadow Tactics, teen horror adventure Oxenfree and moody tearjerker The Last Day Of June.

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After a decade face-down in a dusty digital gulch with the buzzards fighting the lizards for its gizzards, the Desperados series will return to life next year. Publishers THQ Nordic today announced Desperados III, resuming the real-time tactical action, and excitingly it’s being made by Mimimi. They’re the studio who made 2016’s Desperados/Commandos homage Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shotgun, which was great – a fine match. Here, have a look at Desperados III in this preview video from our Matthew.

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Everything old is new again, and everything once overlooked by publishers is cool once more. Today, publisher Kalypso Media (Sudden Strike, Tropico, Dungeons et al) went and bagged themselves the rights to all of Pyro Studios’s old games, which means the entire Commandos series of stealthy tactical puzzlers. Better still, the publisher has already confirmed that new games in the series are on the way, as well as “an extensive adaptation” of the older games to current systems, which sounds like remasters to me.

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Like it or not, subscription services are becoming a greater part of the gaming sphere with each passing month. Humble Monthly, Origin Access, the XBox game pass (which now includes PC games) among others. Many of us already have a subscription to Amazon Prime, which brings with it a slew of perks and giveaways on streaming mega-hub Twitch.tv, and now you can get a monthly bundle of games as part of the service.

The first month’s lineup is an impressive lot, including time-bending FPS Superhot, teen horror adventure Oxenfree, Hotline Miami-esque Mr Shifty, board-game adaptation Tomb of Annihilation and (last, but by no means least) brilliant Japanese-themed Commandos tribute Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun.

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