Ian Hardingham, the co-founder of Mode 7 Games, has left the Frozen Synapse studio and the games industry altogether for a new career as a bona fide brain science man working on detecting Alzheimer’s disease. Goodness me. This does sadly mean that Mode 7 are winding down development a bit, still making the odd small-ish game or two and publishing others but no longer planning “large-scale” games of their own. That’s a shame as they’ve made some crackers but I suppose it is also good to, y’know, work against a horrifying disease.

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Frozen Synapse 2 s campaign puts you in charge of a security force in a sprawling, cyberpunk metropolis where a rogue AI threatens the safety of the populace. It also lets you choose your character s name, honorific, and organisation. So, naturally, it was time for Grand Moff Godzilla Johnson to lead the CyberBois to victory.

This is, of course, the sequel to 2011’s Frozen Synapse. Through procedurally generated, isometric, neon maps, you ll gradually fill out snaps of real-time play with tactical minutiae. Individual units can be commanded to move from point to point, to turn and aim, to duck and stand, to cover certain zones, to focus on or ignore certain enemies, and to wait for specific periods of time before and after doing any of these, in any combination. (more…)

Maybe there’s something to all these tactics games. They’re sneaky – you blink, and you’re flanked with nowhere to hide. Today’s second surprise announcement in the genre is that Frozen Synapse 2 launches next week on Thursday, September 13th. Jack me in.

Frozen Synapse 2 is a vastly more ambitious beast than its purely tactical predecessor. Developer Mode 7 have taken the tense turn-based combat of the first game and transplanted it into a dynamic campaign set across a procedurally generated city. Check out the new trailer below, giving a tantalising peek at its glowing neon world erupting into flames.

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An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC strategy games ever made, now freshened up to include everything from 2017 and 2018. From intricate, global-scale wargames to the tight thrills of guerrilla squads, the broad expanse of the genre contains something for everyone, and we’ve gathered the best of the best.

The vast majority are available to buy digitally, a few are free to download and play forever. They’re all brilliant.

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If you’ve set up a second advent calendar for the release of Frozen Synapse 2, knowing that the turn-based tactical squad shooter’s release window of “2017” means we can only be days away from its launch, ah, I’m sorry to bring bad news. While a delay has seemed clear as the year ticked down, developers Mode 7 have now made that official. Frozen Synapse 2 is now due some time in 2018. Perhaps you’ll use the Christmas hols to create a new 365-day calendar counting this new window of possibility. For now, here, see some pretty simulated cities and top-down action in this new dev video: (more…)

Frozen Synapse 2 [official site] continues to be one of the more exciting games on the horizon, which is a relief given that I’m quoted saying almost exactly that in the latest trailer. It’s the AI factions and simulated city that acts as a backdrop to the tactical action that I’m most excited about, but the good ol’ tactical combat of the original game is the foundation on which the rest is built. Here you can see how new weaponry will change that, and marvel at how smoke grenades and flamethrowers look so lovely in the game’s visual style. … [visit site to read more]

Frozen Synapse 2 [official site] is the game I’m most looking forward to this year. Yes, there’s the not insignificant matter of Civ VI out there on the horizon, but there’s something about the combination of Laser Squad and X-COM Apocalypse that really gets me hot and bothered. In case the Apocalypse connection weren’t already explicit enough – the simulated faction-filled city as backdrop to strategic combat game being the clue – the first devblog for the game namechecks the least-imitated X-COM game almost immediately. You can enjoy the blog, which covers the central incursion mechanic, in either text or video format. The latter is below.

… [visit site to read more]

I’m surprised it took the world this long to do a smash’n’grab on Frozen Synapse‘s extremely clever ‘turn preview’ approach to turn-based strategy. Mode 7 themselves are working on an open-world, slightly more singleplayer-focused follow-up to their ‘simultaneous turn-based tactics’ squad shooter, but in the meantime we get the rather more colourful, appallingly-named TASTEE. For once, I’m not going to hurl XCOM compari-bombs around the place, and look instead to another old dear of TBS: Jagged Alliance.

… [visit site to read more]

Frozen Synapse 2 [official site] is, without a doubt, one of the most exciting games I’ve ever seen. I’ve spent a long time considering how best to put my thoughts about it into words, having met with Paul Kilduff-Taylor, composer of lovely electronica and co-founder of Mode 7 Games, to see how development was progressing. The simple fact is, it ticks so many boxes in the ‘dream game’ column that extreme enthusiasm is entirely appropriate. Here’s why.

… [visit site to read more]

We learned that Frozen Synapse 2 [official site] was in development last month and now we know what it is. Yes, it’s a tactical combat game, featuring customised squads controlled using a simultaneous turn-based system. But what about this open-world malarkey that was promised?

It looks like the gorgeous offspring of Syndicate Wars and Introversion’s cancelled Subversion, which was set to feature procedurally generated cities with breachable buildings. That’s true here as well – a new city every time and you can infiltrate every building. The trailer, below, is as exciting as any I’ve seen this year.

… [visit site to read more]