There is a myth in the gaming industry that strategy games are dead. That’s wrong: this year will see the return of cult classics and the release of reimaginings, the originals of which have long languished in the dusty closets of game publishers. Here are the most anticipated strategies for 2024.
Homeworld 3
The legendary space strategy game from the naughties is back! The game was supposed to be released in 2022, but after several postponements, the launch was pushed back to March this year.
Players will sit in the seat of a space fleet commander to engage in intense battles with galactic cruisers. Battles won’t unfold solely in the void; combat can take place near giant abandoned stations, the ruins of which should be used for tactical superiority; there you can take cover or place turrets to trap the enemy. Right in the middle of a battle, a proton storm can start to change the course of the battle for better or worse, and an asteroid field in the way can be a serious nuisance.
The game features meticulous ballistics simulation, and firefights won’t leave your ships without a trace, leaving them dented and deformed.
Stormgate
This is a game from the Blizzard developers, who decided to get together and create a strategy like in the good old days. Frost Giant Studios employs the authors of Warcraft III and StarCraft II; these names speak for themselves.
In Stormgate, creators promise to realize both single-player story campaigns and intense multiplayer modes. Thanks to the Unreal Engine 5 engine, the battlefield will feature hundreds of detailed units, and the interface will ease the threshold of entry for newcomers to the genre. The developers are proud of the difficulty threshold: any player will be able to access Stormgate, and the game has enough depth for cyberathletes. Maybe one day it will be available for betting on the News 22bet platform.
The action takes place on the alien-invaded Earth, and its last defenders will have to join forces and sit at the controls of huge mechanized robots. The player can choose any side of the conflict, and in an old-school manner, he will have to fight and build a base.
Songs of Conquest
Heroes of Might and Magic is one of the most celebrated strategy games in history, but the franchise has long been dusted off somewhere in Ubisoft’s publishing archives. Its influence is so great that the heir to the legendary third Heroes was simply released by other people. Songs of Conquest was released for a narrow audience in 2022, and this should be its final release.
Strategy works on a proven formula: players need to explore a variety of maps, fight enemies, and mine various valuables and powerful artifacts. For the success of the campaign, you will have to intelligently distribute resources, conduct the necessary research, and expand the boundaries of their fairy-tale kingdom. You can emphasize both physical strength and magic, and if you want, you can develop your unique way of using both.
The title of the game is reflected in the gameplay: right as the game progresses, a bard composes ballads about the gamer’s exploits, adding new verses after each completed mission. At the end of the campaign, a full version of the song will be played based on the player’s actions.
Manor Lords
The most surprising game from the selection is because it’s created not by a team of professionals but by a single developer. But Manor Lords became a hit even before its release.
In this medieval strategy game, players have to develop their villages to turn them into advanced metropolises. As you know, if you want peace, you need to prepare for war. The gameplay won’t be complete without large-scale battles with archers, knights, pikemen, cavalry, and other medieval military units.
The most surprising is the graphical element: although the game was created by one man, its external gloss can compete with the largest representatives of the genre. But we should wait for the release.
Frostpunk 2
Continuation of the urban strategy game about survival in extreme conditions. The Earth survived a cataclysm, after which most of its surface turned into glaciers. However, catastrophically low temperatures didn’t lead to the extinction of mankind; people build settlements around giant steam boilers.
Frostpunk 2 doesn’t force you to control hundreds of units on the battlefields, but it does it in a different way: the player has to face a lot of moral dilemmas, the essence of which can be described by the phrase: “A choice between bad and disgusting decisions.” In the first part, for example, you had to decide whether to use child labor, which of the workers should be placed closer to the boiler, and who should be condemned to frostbite. Of course, all of this is for the benefit of the community, which sooner or later is capable of raising a bad manager on a pitchfork.
The second part should scale up the action. If in the original game, the events unfold in a small village, then in the second part, there will be a giant steampunk megapolis. Where there are more people, there are more worries, and where there are more worries, there are more hard decisions.
