Strategy games are my thing - like, my whole thing. If I’m not playing a game specifically to write about it for TheGamer, there’s a near-one hundred percent chance that I’m moving little guys around a map or watching some RTS esports; none of those newfangled MOBAs for me.
I like to think I’m pretty good at these games in general, from turn-based 4Xes to big, deep Paradox epics, but realistic, modern-military real-time strategy has always eluded me, and not for lack of trying. I’ve tried getting into the vaunted Wargame series several times over the last decade, and bounced off with each attempt. Slitherine Software’sBroken Arrowcould be the game that finally makes the genre click for me.
War Could Change
Broken Arrow is clearly meant to be a direct competitor to Wargame developer Eugen Systems’ latest venture, Warno, and it’s also the first game I’ve seen that has the potential to muscle in on this niche market. The gameplay is nearly identical, from building and deploying armies with a deck-building system straight from the tabletop to unit balance built around hard counters. What sets it apart, though, is that it doesn’t feel quite as overwhelming.
Don’t get me wrong, Broken Arrow is still a hard game if you don’t know what you’re doing, and I definitely don’t; I’m struggling to make it through basic defense missions early in the campaign. I can already tell, though, that by focusing on a more limited unit roster and smaller-scale story missions before turning players loose on skirmish and multiplayer, Slitherine’s venture is much more approachable and accessible.
What Does This Button Do Again?
For me, the challenge with this particular brand of RTS has always been that I’m not necessarily the target audience. These games are targeted squarely at, for lack of a better term, ‘military nerds’.
If the community has a fun nickname for themselves that I’m not aware of, please share it in the comments!
Broken Arrow, like Wargame and Warno before it, fully expects you to know the difference between a HEAT missile and a HARM missile (for example) as a matter of course. Players who spent time in the service, or just love learning about the tools of modern war, will have little trouble, but that’s not my particular brand of geekery. I see a missile icon, and I expect that it will go far, and then go boom. To me, tank silhouettes are just that, and my knowledge of warplanes extends to knowing the difference between fighters and bombers.
Getting good means learning all these differences and how to use them in-game, and by limiting its starting combatants to just the USA and Russia and their key unit types, Broken Arrow makes the whole thing much more digestible than Warno’s mammoth 1000+ unit roster. I’m not where I need to be yet, but give me a week and I feel like I could be; that was never the case with any of Eugen’s games, which have always felt like I needed an all-night study session with the wiki just to survive a simple skirmish.
Uncle Slitherine Wants YOU
That alone is a huge win for a genre that has a dedicated fanbase with a robust multiplayer scene. When I first started up Broken Arrow on launch day, there were about 32,000 players online, with about 1000 of them actively in multiplayer matches. Many of them, I assume, were Eugen fans eager to see what Slitherine had to offer. Some will stick around, others will head back to Warno or to Wargame: Red Dragon; that’s just how these things go.
I’m sure that a not-insignificant number of those 32,000 players, though, and the others who will log in over the coming weekend, are like me; players who want to get into the genre but need a lower stepping stone. Not an easier game or a more simplistic one, just one with a slightly lower barrier to entry so that they can get their feet under them, and that’s the value of what Broken Arrow offers.
It’s clear that Eugen recognizes the level of competition that Broken Arrow offers; Warno was taken to half price on Steam the same day Broken Arrow launched. While it’s true that Broken Arrow does have the potential to draw players away from Eugen, it can also serve as a bridge. I can’t be the only player who’s tried and failed to get into these games, and if Broken Arrow offers a path to growing the playerbase, then it could be the most welcome addition to the genre we’ve yet seen.
