Hey there chaps !
Some fresh publisher-related news today, with the announcement of Regiments as a newcomer in the Microprose-published line of simulation & strategy indie games.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1109680/Regiments/
This is a most satisfying & welcomed news indeed. The developer of Regiments, Mikhail, is the epitome of the passionate, hard-working indie dev who never shied away from a challenge. A self-learning achiever, he learned code from scratch years ago in order to develop the game of his dreams. He got there all by himself, and I for one was very touched and impressed when I got to try the demo of his game during the Summer Steam festival a few weeks ago. He embodies everything we believe in, and it is little surprise that we were among those who supported his addition to the line-up.
Any fan of Wargame & Steel Division, World in Conflict & Ground Control or even Company of Heroes will find many things to love in Mikhail’s innovative take at the genre. Straying away from conventions, he managed to develop a smart, original gameplay that is completely new, and yet will feel familiar to long-term players of the aforementioned classics. Regiments adopted the Cold War gone hot as a setting reminiscent of Wargame and World in Conflict, but with a new approach that isn’t based on deck building or micro-management.
The player gets to buy “task forces” with points gained by occupying objectives. These ad-hoc company-sized forces come from a list generated from the unit type picked at the beginning. These task forces can be a comprehensive or overly specialized assortment of platoons and support missions, depending on what you need at a given point. Altogether with the initial force chosen by the players, three additional Task Forces will be added successively each time a timer runs out, bringing your regiment up in size. Considering these reinforcements cannot be bought in advance, the meta is entirely in the hands of the player, who has to find a way to dictate the pace to the enemy while reacting to the AI’s choices at the same time. It results in a very dynamic gameplay where force conservation, smart maneuvering and combined arms warfare are the key to victory.
Learning to play Regiments was a very easy yet satisfying, rewarding process. The complete customizable time speed allows you to play that game the way you like it, together with an active pause. As such, it gets only as Real-Timey as you will let it become, which makes it a very acceptable pick for turn-based grognards. The easy-to-learn, well-thought interface with its intuitive functions are certainly part of this comfortable learning curve. It is made so that you’d have to micro-manage only the important part. Need to withdraw and refit your unit? Just click the corresponding button, and your platoon will all by itself initiate a fighting retreat towards its rear maintenance area. Wanna fortify? Just leave your platoon in place with the right orientation, and the unit will prepare defensive positions if left inactive.
Well, the only problem with all that is that you cannot blame the game for your own failures, and there can be quite a few of them failures seeing how uncannily efficient the AI might be at time. As a non-nonsense being, it doesn’t care much about your feelings and will not hesitate to push its advantage. Sometimes you get the right combo, and you end up winning hard, crushing the enemy – but sometimes the AI does you, and it hurts! But it’s never truly lost: destroyed units come back as reinforcements for a price, and it is not rare to see the frontline move back and forth. Again, a truly refreshing experience that I advise you to try out when the next demo will come out (who knows, might be soon!).
In the meantime, be good chaps and go leave the maker of Regiments a wishlist & a follow, he certainly deserves your attention as much as he deserves my fandom.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1109680/Regiments/
Cheers and see you around soon for our next update for Task Force Admiral !
Eagle Six, Out !