Earlier this month, we asked you to vote for your favourite strategy games of all time to celebrate the launch (and glorious return) of several strategy classics this month, including Relic's WW2 RTS Company Of Heroes 3, Blue Byte's The Settlers: New Allies and Cyanide's fantasy Warhamball Blood Bowl 3. And cor, I've never seen such love for individual expansions and total conversion mods among mainline RTS games and 4Xs. As with all strategy games, however, there can only be one victor - and you can find out what that single strategy game to rule them all is right here. Here are your 50 favourite strategy games of all time, as voted for by you, the RPS readership.
]]>Strategy games is an enormous genre in PC gaming, with real-time, turn-based, 4X and tactics games all flying the same flag to stake their claim as the one true best strategy game. Our list of the best strategy games on PC covers the lot of them. We like to take a broad view here at RPS, and every game listed below is something we firmly believe that you could love and play today. You'll find 30-year-old classics nestled right up against recent favourites here, so whether you're to the genre or want to dig deep for some hidden gems, we've got you covered. Here are our 50 best strategy games for 2023.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>What Works And Why is a monthly column where Gunpoint and Heat Signature designer Tom Francis digs into the design of a game or mechanic and analyses what makes it good.
Games about one player character against hundreds of enemies generally have to give you some kind of unfair advantage. In action games, it's usually resilience: getting shot in Call of Duty covers you in jam for 3 seconds but leaves you otherwise unharmed, gunshots in Wolfenstein can be fixed with chicken dinners, and in Doom 2016 punching a demon feels so good it physically mends you.
Stealth games need a different solution, because the fun part is generally over by the time you get shot. That's good - they don't need jam vision or dinner magic. Instead they need a crutch that helps you before things get that bad. And in games about hiding from everyone, that's usually intelligence. Information is power. To evade improbable odds, you need to know more than you reasonably should.
]]>Oh no, you've tripped the alarm. Now the terrifying RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, knows you're here. It's going to hunt you down and force you to listen to it. Quick! Think of a way out of this, before you hear all about Adam becoming an accidental mass murderer in Dishonored, or John obsessively re-loading his way out of a bad situation. If you don't escape, I'll have to tell you about the time I threw a gun at someone's head in Heat Signature, to absolutely no effect. This week, you see, we're talking about Things Going Wrong.
]]>Aside from starting a new tradition of unusually-named Steam Awards, Valve have also pulled out their worn and adored bargain bucket and have begun to fill it with games you’ll enthusiastically buy and probably never play. Yes, it's their Autumn Sale. In the streets, the apocalyptic jockeying for TVs and blenders has started. The moon has turned blood red. And I looked and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Black Friday, and sales followed with him.
]]>Dark days for the world. Maybe videogames can save us? Haha yes of course they can haha.
Here are some really good videogames, though. They'll take you to a better place for a while. These are the RPS team's 13 personal favourites from the current Steam Summer Sale: we believe in these games, and we believe that you should play them too.
]]>This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, Invisible, Inc. [official site].
Invisible, Inc.’s defining features aren’t its most obvious, and yet they’re all about making things obvious. This turn-based tactics game about hacking and sneaking through procedurally generated levels thrives on them, because they make you feel like a mastermind, even though your agents are outnumbered and outgunned. They make every turn a exercise in deliberate planning, and they allow you to pull the most fantastically elaborate and elegant heists. And you’d never think such simple concepts could have so much power:
THE MECHANIC: Peeking and observing
]]>What is the best strategy game of 2015? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games from throughout the year, and behind today's door is...
]]>Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we'll make it to the end.
]]>If you haven't been paying attention to Klei Entertainment's creations for the past few years, you're missing out on some of the best games in the world. This year's Invisible, Inc. [official site], recently expanded in fine style, might be the best turn-based game I've discovered since I joined the Chess Club all those years ago, and Mark of the Ninja is a completely different but almost equally brilliant rewrite of the stealth genre. All of the studio's games are free to play on Steam this weekend, starting right now, with discounts should you wish to buy them after having a taste.
]]>Invisible, Inc. [official site] is a turn-based stealth game about guiding variously equipped corporate agents through procedurally generated office buildings to hack computers, steal information, and get out again alive. It was our Game of the Month for June and is one of the best games of the year. And it has an expansion out tomorrow.
Contingency Plan adds four new agents to control, new weapons, items and augments, and more levels for the existing campaign and endless mode.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every weekday of the year, perhaps for all time.
Invisible, Inc. [official site] is one of the best games released this year. It was the game you should have been playing all through June. It's a near-flawless mixture of turn-based tactics and stealth mechanics, which takes the ambiguities of the latter and fixes them in place with the streamlined, well-communicated grace of the former.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every weekday of the year, perhaps for all time.
Klei Entertainment might be currently wowing us all with Invisible Inc, but let's not forget how they also delighted with 2012's Mark Of The Ninja [official site].
]]>Early Access games are here to stay, but is that cause for concern or celebration? We gathered to discuss whether early access benefits developers or players in its current state, and how we'd make it better. Along the way, we discussed the best alpha examples, paying for unfinished games, our love of regularly updated mods, Minecraft and the untapped potential of digital stores.
]]>Are you the kind of person who finds the stealthy route through every Deus Ex level, and who strives to ghost and no-kill every Dishonored level? Me too, but recently I've started to realise there's a cost to playing this way. A perfect ghost run requires just that: perfection. Being spotted is a blemish on my record that I just can't abide – so the second a guard sounds the alarm or raises their weapon, my finger is on the quick-load button, breaking the flow of my own experience and snapping the fiction of whatever game I'm playing.
But Invisible, Inc. [official site] does something miraculous. It solves that problem with a single button, because when my favourite agent finds themselves at the business end of a guard's semi-automatic with no chance of escape, there's always another option: rewind.
]]>Adam: Invisible, Inc. [official site] is a turn-based stealth game and there is absolutely no reason why turn-based stealth should be a thing that works as well as this does. It is also has procedurally generated tactical cyberpunk environments, which should be occasionally confusing and a pain in the backside but are almost always indistinguishable from hand-crafted puzzles latent with drama and tension.
It's both our Game of the Month and my favourite game since Crusader Kings II! What do we all think?
]]>Magazines have front covers, RPS has Game Of The Month. It's our attempt at whittling down the thick backlog of videogames growing around you into a single, manageable game. The one game you should play if you've only time to play one game in the month of June. The one game you must play, even if you have no time to play games at all, because otherwise your peers will laugh at you, your romantic interests will sneer at you, and your trousers will fall down at an inopportune moment like in a bad BBC One comedy.
This month: Invisible, Inc. [official site].
]]>Invisible, Inc. [official site] is a game of “tactical espionage” from the creators of Mark of the Ninja, immediately understandable as XCOM meets Mission Impossible. You control a tiny team of sleuths working to rob the procedurally-generated vaults, server farms and detention centres of four high-tech corporations. In just 72 hours you’ll be taking on a fittingly impossible mission, and failure is not an option. Here's wot I think.
]]>Are you afraid of Early Access? Convinced that playing unfinished titles is a waste of the slim collection of hours you call a life? Worry no more: Invisible, Inc [official site], one of the recent leading lights down in the Early Access ghetto, is very nearly finished, so you can play Klei's excellent cyberpunkish, stealth-based, turn-based strategy game in good conscience. It's out on May 12, with a bunch of new stuff and things due to be added into this release version. I realise you're all busy being sickeningly inhuman in GTA V right now so probably DON'T EVEN CARE, but as far as I'm concerned II getting finished is the best of best news.
]]>Hey! It's a new episode of Quinns' weekly video series in which he examines one mechanic in one game. This week: how Invisible, Inc. structures its levels to increase the depth of its strategy, humanity and emotion. Watch it below!
]]>An irregular series in which I revisit Early Access games a few months on from when I first tried them. Have they come along much? Does a finished game seem a realistic prospect? This time - Klei's turn-based cyberpunk stealth title Invisible, Inc [official site], which I last played in September.
]]>Invisible Inc is a turn-based, grid-based, cyberpunkish stealth strategy game from Klei, creators of Don't Starve and Mark of the Ninja. It's about secret agents breaking into sinister corporations to steal cash and data. It's about risking everything and losing everything, but then trying it all again because you're damn sure you can do better. It's out now on Steam Early Access, and I've spent the last couple of days sheltered within its billowing trenchcoat.
]]>Invisible, Inc. is coming to Steam Early Access on August 19th. It's developer Klei's return to stealth after 2012's Mark of the Ninja, but this time it's turn-based, tactical, and about steering a team of operatives through a Syndicate-inspired world of corporate espionage. It's also their return to procedural generation and permadeath after 2013's vastly successful Burtonesque survival game, Don't Starve.
I spoke to company founder and programmer Jamie Cheng about why they came back to stealth game design, the challenges of procedureal generation, the right way to do Early Access, and mods.
]]>Due to the explosive nature of this post's contents, we're working to a tight schedule here. I'm going to cut straight to the chase and I suggest you read as fast as you possibly can. The mighty Klei Entertainment sent an encrypted message to my neural inbox to let me know that their turn-based tactical espionage game, Invisible, Inc., is now available in alpha form. You can pre-purchase from the official website, which will give you immediate access to the game's current build by means of a redeemable Steam key. The game will be available to buy directly through Steam Early Access in the near(ish) future. A new trailer, below, shows a spot of isometric infiltration and contains music that would fit happily in a new No One Lives Forever game.
]]>It's been nearly a week since Klei ROCKED THE HEADLINES by changing its turn-based strategy stealth game's name from Incognita to Invisible, Inc. "What could it possibly mean?" nearly every human on Earth pondered simultaneously. Then they all caught the hidden pun, embedded with a deadly precision, and chuckled in perfect harmony. With that blanket of sound covering their actions, Klei quickly slipped all sorts of new features into the rechristened game before anybody even knew what hit them. They thought they got away with it, but I knew what was up. I tracked designers James Lantz and Jason Dreger back to Klei's secret cyber-noir rooftop lair and forced them to divulge secrets about the new name, the game's (some would say) too-high difficulty, plans for upping replayability, how much content will be in the final game, and when Klei's hoping to release it for real. All that and more is below.
]]>It's dangerous being an international master of espionage. In between all the hideously interesting intrigue, early exposure to crazy cool tech, and bottomless piles of hot, filthy sex that just happen wherever you are, there's all sorts of horrible stuff. You could, for instance, get captured and have your memories wiped, your entire identity brainwashed away as though merely gum on an old tennis shoe. I assume that's exactly what happened to Klei's espionage XCOM Incognita, which is now going by new alias Invisible, Inc for mysteeeeeeeeeerious reasons. I have inquired for further information, but for now we'll just have to make do with a new trailer and information on the Early Access alpha's latest major update.
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