Wartile (PC) Preview

Wartile is weird and unique in the genre of strategy games. Essentially, the game is to play a board game. To clarify this, the player takes turns moving pieces that represent different Vikings across a hex grid and accomplishes goals. It is a very interesting amalgamation of board game mixed with computer game, as the board levels are rendered rather nicely. When encountering various other 'pieces,' like trees or enemies, they can be smashed like so many angry gamers probably once wanted to do.

For example, the first unit can be moved three spaces, so clicking on it, it shows the range, and after placing it, the enemies then take a move. If you get within range, combat auto-starts and is based on stats like accuracy, damage and defence. Once victorious, the enemy shatters apart and the path is open again.

In between levels, the 'player' (which takes on a whole new level here) can buy additional pieces, buy new cards, and change equipment, and so on. Different pieces do different things, such as a Viking that is more agile, or ones that do more damage. Equipment found on the board can be put onto the characters, changing both appearance as well as stats. Cards have special functions, like shield bash or healing.

For being in alpha, a lot of Wartile seems pretty solid, and the graphics for the most part look good. One of the largest issues right now is in regards to the user interface, where text doesn't resize right, with the biggest problem being that stats are simply hard to see. It took a while to figure out equipment did anything beyond appearance due to just a tiny little sliver of green on a bar representing an improvement, so numbers or a value would be much nicer.