Cute turn-based tactics romp Wargroove is due a rather chunky expansion next month, letting players embark on a new co-op story campaign—also playable solo—and several other new additions, all for free. Give the launch trailer a watch above.

Double Trouble introduces a new playable faction, the criminal Outlaws, and a trio of new commanders. It's actually four characters, but Orla and Errol are twins who always fight alongside each other as a single commander unit. 

All the teal-haired crooks seem to be Scottish in Wargroove's universe, which is still a huge step up from only letting us be dwarves or the occasional Doctor Who. We've got range, you know. 

Alongside the commanders, you'll be able to field two new units, thieves and riflemen, and try out new arcade missions, competitive quickplay maps, public and private multiplayer lobbies and a new volcano theme. The new theme, along with other new bits and bobs, will also be available in the editor.

Last year, Malindy Hetfeld gave the base game a 78 in her Wargroove review. "Brimming character and imagination, Wargroove occasionally loses its groove over long-winded core gameplay," she wrote. I got myself the Switch version, and it really benefits from being playable on the couch or while I'm having a lazy morning in bed.

Wargroove: Double Trouble will be available on Steam on February 6. 

Wargroove should be quite a bit more welcoming when an update hits the cheery but tough turn-based romp today. It's not easy to save the kingdom of Cherrystone, but difficulty presets and a new, flexible checkpoint system should make the journey a bit less perilous if you choose. 

The default difficulty has been giving people problems, and changing the sliders to give you even a tiny bit more damage or income knocks the game into 'easier mode', immediately limiting you to a maximum of one star per mission. It's a tad harsh. The update, thankfully, introduces a bunch of presets and reduces penalties. 

Wargroove's default difficulty is Hard and the only way to achieve S-ranks (aside from making it even harder, if you're bold), Medium is a bit easier and lets you get three-star ranks, Easy knocks it down to two, and Story is the easiest of them all, limiting you to one star.

The checkpoint system essentially gives you a single battle save. Instead of having to start all over again because you messed up—maybe you lost a unit you were ordered to protect—you can set a checkpoint anywhere. You only get one in every battle, but it can be overwritten. 

There are plenty of other changes, too, including a CPU player option in multiplayer, shared vision among allies, better unit information and S-rank requirements clearly displayed. The game's pace, which can be rather slow, has also been cranked up a bit. A movement speed option will allow you make battles brisk, and skipping animations should be faster. 

Wargroove's update will be live from 1 pm GMT/8 am EST today. 

Wargroove has its differences from Advance Wars, the Nintendo series that inspired it, but that isn't stopping some players from immediately turning Wargroove into Advance Wars. Thanks to its built-in mapmaking and campaign-building tools, Wargroove already has a bunch of player-created maps to play, including recreations of Advance Wars missions. Here are the coolest Wargroove mods and maps we've found so far. 

How to download Wargroove custom maps 

Wargroove doesn't use the Steam Workshop for sharing maps and mods, because it actually has its own built-in map sharing tools that work across the PC and consoles. To browse and download maps, choose Custom Content from the main menu, then Share. From the Share menu you can browse for maps, see what's currently popular, or click Enter Code to download a particular map. Copy/paste the codes from the maps listed below to download them. 

The best Wargroove custom maps and campaigns 

There are already hundreds of custom maps in the Wargroove community, but these are interesting, polished maps we've tried out ourselves. For more good stuff, check out Chucklefish's community map spotlight.

Indiana Bones and the Angel Statue - 9TBXTXRY

A cute little "adventure" with light puzzle solving as you venture into a ~spooky~ tomb. Nice use of scripting in a simple map.

Triple Trouble - WUJTWQ48

A super cool map concept. It's a 1v1 map but split across three separate lanes, with barracks and strongholds and buildings to capture in each one. Take a single enemy stronghold to win by figuring out how to most efficiently divide your forces.

Yorthendon Citadel - YEGW2QKD

A big symmetrical map for four player versus, with a guarded treasury of valuable buildings locked in the center. Whoever controls that portion of the map will likely have the resources to win.

Capture the Flag - FCC6ZECY

The game's in the name. You lose if the enemy takes over your stronghold or kills your commander, but the real goal here is to grab the flag from your enemy's base and bring it home. The unit who grabs it turns into a defenseless villager, so you'll need to protect them.

2v2v2v2 (pintade) - DQ6DJEWN

A huge map designed for co-op play. You and a partner start in one corner of the map and gradually spread out, while three AI teams move around in the fog of war. If you're hunting for a co-op map you can play for weeks, this is it.

Japan A.I. Large - LCB6RCTG

That's Japan! Neat. It's a large one, so expect some long multiplayer campaigns.

The Defense of Strahnbrad - W6WVJHL2

A Warcraft-themed map that feels like a proper campaign mission, with fog of war and a city to protect.

Advance Wars Alpha - 6FK77AS6

The first four maps from the Advance Wars campaign, remade in Wargroove. The entire campaign is in development, and will eventually contain all the maps from the original game.

There are only a few Wargroove mods (so far) 

Most of Wargroove's community efforts are focused around its built-in editing tools, so there's not much of a mod scene yet. But there are a couple to check out:

Modpacker - A tool for installing and creating mods that will likely become the go-to for modders.

Advance Wars 1 in Wargroove - Don't get too excited—this mod doesn't reskin the game with Advance Wars sprites. But it does rebalance it and globalize the leader powers, bringing combat more in line with Advance Wars' gameplay. You'll need the Modpacker to install.

The CEO of Chucklefish has responded to Sony's claims that Playstation 4 crossplay is available to any devs and publishers that request it.

In an interview earlier this week, Sony chairman Shawn Layden told Game Informer that "we’re open for business on this one. All it takes is for publishers and developers who wish to permission it. As ever, just work with your PlayStation account manager, and they will walk you through the steps that we’ve learned through our partnership with Epic on how this works."

Tiy, Chucklefish's CEO responded to the claim on Resetera,  "We made many requests for crossplay (both through our account manager and directly with higher ups) all the way up until release month. We were told in no uncertain terms that it was not going to happen."

Chucklefish's own game Wargroove has crossplay enabled between PC, Xbox One, and Switch and were keen to include PlayStation 4 players but as Tiy reports, "We were told no." 

PC, Xbox One, and Switch increasingly share multiplayer space (and shared progress in some cases), . Fortnite and Rocket League both have crossplay enabled on PlayStation, but the platform seems closed to others. Sony really isn't doing itself any favours, as Steven pointed out last year:

It makes sense why Sony wouldn't see the need to play ball with its competitors and allow cross-play. But the issue is about more than just protecting a bottom line: Sony's backwards stance on cross-play harms the games industry and players as a whole, including PC gamers.

I don't play many turn-based multiplayer games on Steam, which is why it took until Wargroove for me to discover the fantastic feature Steam calls Turn Notifications. Turn notifications are exactly what they sound like: Little pop-ups that tell you when you can make a move in a turn-based game. The pop-ups look just like the ones Steam uses to tell you a friend has just launched a game, or it's finished downloading something. This feature has existed since 2014! I had no idea, but it's supported by board games like Carcassonne and strategy games like Frozen Synapse. In Wargroove, it's implemented in a wonderful way that reminds me of how I played Advance Wars with my friends in the early 2000s.

I played a lot of Advance Wars solo, in both Game Boy Advance games and both Nintendo DS games. But I also played hours of multiplayer with friends by passing a single GBA around. I'd take a turn and hand it off, chat with whoever wasn't up next. Maybe we'd be watching TV or listening to music. 10 minutes later the GBA would come back around to me, and I'd survey the map to see what happened after I made my last moves. We'd play this way until the batteries gave out, and probably never actually finish a game. It was still fun.

I saw "asynchronous play" listed as a bullet point for Wargroove, but didn't think it could replicate that same experience online. It does, thanks to two ingredients: Server-hosted multiplayer games, and Steam's turn notifications. I can host a game and invite friends, but it's not actually being hosted on my PC. That means I can take a turn, close Wargroove, and go about my business. When other players complete their turns and it's back to me, Steam pops up a notification and I can hop back in.

I could even have a few different multiplayer sessions going and get notifications for each of them. Thankfully, Steam compiles these on a profile page and even includes a button to launch the game right there (though its hooks aren't advanced enough to take you straight into the match itself). It's like playing a mobile game like Words With Friends, except it's, y'know, War With Friends.

Of course, there's nothing quite like playing a game in a room together with friends, and the true approximation of that childhood experience would be playing Wargroove on a Nintendo Switch (or laptop), passing the system around the room. But the friends I once played Advance Wars with all live hours and timezones away. We work different hours and days. Having notifications that can keep a game alive is pretty much the next best thing, and makes me way more likely to play Wargroove's multiplayer.

If you've ever struggled to keep a turn-based strategy game going with friends, check out Steam's list of all the games that support turn notifications. There are quite a few!

Chucklefish, the developer of Starbound and publisher of Stardew Valley, just released their latest game Wargroove. It's turn-based tactics with a strong vibe of Advance Wars only in a fantasy setting where one of the units is adorable dogs. You can read our review here.

On the Chucklefish blog they've announced their post-release plans for Wargroove, which in the immediate future includes a patch that's currently going through approval. It'll fix bugs like online spectating not working on Fog of War maps.

Beyond that there will be a fix for various quality-of-life issues people have been complaining about, like a way to set fast map movement to be always on and faster ways to skip battle scenes. In the long term they're looking at "a larger content update, DLC and more." Also mentioned in the blog post is the fact that, though the game's only been out since February 1, it's already covered development costs. 

Chucklefish have been on Reddit too, doing an AMA about Wargroove's release. In response to a question about the decision to have dogs flee from combat when defeated, they gave this response: "A lot of the motivation for it came from the feedback that we had at conventions, with both players and press expressing sadness when they saw the dogs die. We agreed that none of us wanted to see dogs dying in the game, and just made them run away instead." So that's nice.

Wargroove's map editor is simple-to-use, but lacks a few amenities. For one, you can't open up the codex from the editor, so you can't scroll through unit or terrain types to see their stats. Compounding the issue, the unit icons are tiny pixel nuggets, and it can be hard to tell what kind of unit you're selecting.

I wanted a reference guide to use while working in the map maker, so here it is. I've used the Cherrystone unit names and sprites, but have included the faction-specific icons and names above each entry. Despite the different names, each faction's units are identical. 

Below the unit stats, I've included the terrain stats and a few map making tips. If you're not already war grooving, check out our review.

Wargroove unit stats

Swordsman

Cost: 100 | Movement: 4 (Land) | Sight: 4 | CapturesCritical hit: When adjacent to its commander.

The most basic combat unit. Good for cleaning up infantry and capturing towns.

Pikeman

Cost: 150 | Movement: 3 (Land) | Sight: 4 | CapturesCritical hit: When adjacent to another allied pikeman.

A strong, cheap unit that is best deployed in groups and is strong against horsemen.

Battlepup

Cost: 200 | Movement: 5 (Land) | Sight: 4 Critical hit: When another dog is adjacent to the target.

Strong against ground units, low defense.

Ranger

Cost: 500 | Movement: 3 (Land) | Sight: 5 | Range: 3CapturesCritical hit: When unit has not moved during the current turn.

Good for defense, or weakening captured buildings at range. Weak against most attacks.

Alchemist

Cost: 400 | Movement: 5 (Land)| Sight: 4 | CapturesCritical hit: When defense is 3 or higher.

Strong against air units. Can heal allied targets by 20 percent for 300 gold.

Warship

Cost: 900 | Movement: 8 (Sea)| Sight: 5 | Range: 2-4Critical hit: When on a beach tile.

Strong against ground units. Cannot attack air units.

Harpoon Ship

Cost: 550| Movement: 4 (Sea)| Sight: 6 | Range: 3-6Critical hit: When on a reef tile.

Strong against air units. Cannot attack ground units.

Emberwing

Cost: 1250| Movement: 8 (Ground) | Sight: 6Critical hit: When target is on a road.

Strong against all ground and water units—weaker against anti-air units, and cannot attack other air units.

Knight

Cost: 600| Movement: 6 (Ground)| Sight: 4Critical hit: When it moves six spaces before attacking.

Powerful critical. Strong defense, but takes 70 damage from spearmen.

Trebuchet

Cost: 900| Movement: 6 (Ground)| Sight: 4 | Range: 2-5Critical hit: When attacking at max range.

Cannot move and attack in the same turn. Strong against ground units and water units. Cannot attack air units.

Merfolk

Cost: 250| Movement: 5 (Water/Land)| Sight: 4 | Range: 2 | CapturesCritical hit: When on river or sea tiles.

Amphibious. Low damage.

Sea Turtle

Cost: 400| Movement: 12 (Sea)| Sight: 6Critical hit: When on deep sea tiles.

Naval unit. Can only attack other naval units.

Witch

Cost: 800| Movement: 7 (Air) | Sight: 6  Critical hit: When target is not adjacent to a witch of its own.Ability: Hex deals 10 percent damage to all enemy types in a large radius. Costs 300 gold.

Direct attacks are air-to-air only.

Harpy

Cost: 600| Movement: 5 (Air) | Sight: 5Critical hit: When above a mountain. 

Air unit. Can attack all unit types for medium to low damage.

Golem

Cost: 1200| Movement: 5  (Ground) | Sight: 3Critical hit: When at or below 40 percent health.

Attacks most ground and amphibious units for 100-plus damage. Does 45 damage to units of its own type, 85 damage to horsemen, 75 damage to wagons, and 85 damage to buildings.

Ballista

Cost: 800| Movement: 6 (Ground) | Sight: 4 | Range: 2-6Critical hit: At minimum range.

Can attack all enemy types, but is weak against everything except air units. Cannot move and attack in the same turn.

Wagon

Cost: 300| Movement: 12 (Land)| Sight: 4 | TransportCritical hit: N/A

Transports one ground unit by land.

Barge

Cost: 200| Movement: 10 (Water)| Sight: 4 | TransportCritical hit: N/A

Transports two ground units across water tiles.

Balloon

Cost: 500| Movement: 6 (Air)| Sight: 4 | TransportCritical hit: N/A

Transports two ground units by air.

Terrain types: Movement penalties and defense

Every piece of terrain has defensive and movement properties. For instance, deep sea tiles hinder movement less than shallow sea tiles, and reef tiles (which look like rocks) hinder movement greatly but provide extra defense. 

Decorations, however, have no effect on movement or defense, and can be passed through, even if they look similar to terrain tiles (eg, ocean rocks, which look more like obstacles than reefs).

Below are all of the terrain types. Click here for the full-sized image.

Map making basics

Map types: If you want to test your map against an AI opponent, you'll need to change the map type to Scenario in the Map Properties settings. It defaults to Skirmish, which cannot include AI opponents.

Scrolling around: Keep trying to click the middle mouse button to move your view around? I'm afraid it's WASD to do that, which is a bit cumbersome since the keyboard isn't needed for anything else.

Changing unit properties: The dialogue box icon in the tool bar (on the right, next to the options button) allows you to select placed units and buildings to adjust their health and other options, such as which units barracks can recruit.

Deleting units: To delete a unit, you need to be in the unit placement mode. Instead of left clicking to drop the unit you're holding, right click on the space of an existing unit to remove it. Annoyingly, this only works if it's possible to place the unit you're holding in the spot the unit you're deleting occupies. For example, you need to have a water unit selected to delete another water unit.

Using the cutscene editor: It takes a little fiddling, but the cutscene editor is pretty easy to use. For starters, try this:

• Select Timeline > New > Create Actor.
• Choose an actor.
• Click the Settings tab, set movement to 'from left' and unit direction to 'right'. 
• Select a grid slot near the center of the frame.
• Close the event and timeline. 
• Click 'Playback' (what look like play buttons aren't play buttons).
• Your actor should enter from the left and stop at the selected grid slot.

It’s very hard not to focus entirely on Cesar, Wargroove’s best boy and commander of his own army of warpups. Yes, dogs in shiny armour are a playable unit in this game. There is no violence against the four-legged soldiers, either—instead of dying, they just run away. If you’re not sold already, one of the other 12 commanders might do the trick. Don’t be fooled by the light-hearted tone, however—Wargroove is filled with creative, demanding challenges.

An easy comparison to reach for is Into The Breach. Both feature direct, turn-based confrontation between two factions who often use the landscape to their advantage. But Wargroove is more in every way; more factions, more units, more map, more more. This could sound overwhelming but getting started is actually really easy. 

In the first few missions, as well as the arcade mode, your goal is generally to either defeat the opposing army’s commander or take their fortress. Capturing unallied buildings on the map or taking them from your opponent earns you money, which you can spend on new units or health. The campaign introduces the units one after another and gives you hints as to their use. The first time you’re up against airborne fiends, for example, you also gain ballistas and mages, both excellent against that particular type of enemy. These missions give you time to get to know units and their strengths and weaknesses without being overbearing. Knowing what type of soldier fares best against what enemy is crucial—a soldier with the distinct advantage can often win a battle in one strike. If they don’t, your opponent gets to counter.

Commanders are the most important characters, not only because they’re the strongest and look the coolest, but because each of them has a unique special ability, the so-called groove, which is charged by defeating enemies. Some grooves have defensive capabilities like extra health or defence, some are just good old fashioned special attacks.

While all armies share the same standard units, from small foot soldiers to massive golems and units for sea combat, they all have distinctly different looks that fit each commander and their lands. The people of the Japan-inspired Heavensong Empire build pagodas instead of stone castles, the golem of the Floran plant race looks like a giant tree. In terms of character design and animation, Wargroove is truly a standout.

Command & Conquer

The 30-plus missions of the single-player campaign follow a cute (if not particularly inventive) fantasy story. As well as standard conquering and destruction tasks, you’ll be rescuing prisoners from a fortress or helping refugees flee the site of a battle using wagons. If you prefer a quick challenge, there’s an arcade mode for each commander, and a puzzle mode in which you have to finish a mission within one round.

Wargroove’s weaknesses are its at times crushing difficulty and tendency to drag on. Positioning characters in the right spots for attacks and critical hits is already difficult enough. But Wargroove’s maps are huge, meaning you can spend round after round simply traveling to meet the enemy. It’s not always clear how damage is calculated, and I had to adjust it in the options to have a chance at more than one mission. Maps often have chokepoints such as bridges that can be difficult to circumvent, quickly leading to your soldiers literally queuing to get slaughtered. Flanking enemies is really important—but generating an army large enough to do so takes time. 

A unit’s health also acts as its strength, leading to the problem common to games such as The Banner Saga where some characters simply act as cannon fodder, waiting on your replacement unit to make the trek from your barracks over to the actual fight. I’ve restarted some missions because it’s easier to start over than to move your half-dead unit away, heal them and then have them travel somewhere else.

The multiplayer for up to 4 people comes with its own maps and is organised by passing in-game match codes around. In 2-player mode, I found small maps, evenly split in the middle by bridges. Both players pick a commander and start out on equal footing, with the same amount of buildings to conquer on each side, including multiple barracks. In this mode it’s vital to take buildings and retain them, as you’re going for direct confrontation with no way to skirt each other. 

Once you hold enough buildings, meaning money, and hold even just one barracks more than the other player, the game is all but decided. Victory is again achieved killing the commander or taking the fort, so real players are more likely than the CPU to aggressively bolster their forces to keep buildings surrounded. Whereas the campaign manages to switch things up, here the simple gameplay works to Wargroove’s detriment—I could have done with more variety to elevate this mode above its arcade counterpart.

Wargroove does invite you to try your own hand at level design as it comes with a brilliant set of highly intuitive tools you can use to create your own maps and even cutscenes. Chucklefish certainly wants you in for the long haul, but as I started skipping lengthy battle animations and came to dread any standard battle, I wondered whether less isn’t sometimes more.