Fantasy XCOM crossed with Chess. That’s a very appealing pitch if, like me, you enjoy both of those games. For what it’s worth, I’ve loved XCOM for years now, since Enemy Unknown blew me away 12 (!) years ago. I’ve been trying to play Chess even longer; my dad taught me the rules when I was kid, back in the distant years of the last millennium.
Artifice: War Tactics is a new roguelite strategy game by Silvine Game Studios. Set in a medieval fantasy world, players must take down their enemies in turn-based battles between strange creatures and powerful heroes. This is, ostensibly, the studio’s first effort, but a bit of digging revealed that key team members were also behind Asura: Vengeance Edition, an under-appreciated action-RPG inspired by Indian mythology. A debut this may be, but there is some pedigree.
Artifice, Chess, and XCOM
The connection between Artifice and its inspirations is very much present, but it’s also a surprising game built around some unexpected mechanics. I’ve spent several hours with it and in that time I’ve come to the conclusion that it feels somewhat like you’re playing Battle Chess but, at the same time, your opponent is playing XCOM. I’ll try and make that make sense for you…
In the dying embers of a Chess game, when one player is trying to put the other into check, it often descends into a game of cat and mouse where the king and any remaining pieces are on the run and dodging the advances of an opponent in ascendancy. Artifice shares a similar feeling, where you and the AI are trying pin each other down and get your pieces into the best position for this turn and the next.
The XCOM element comes into play because you and your opponent have one key difference: one acts, the other reacts. During your turn you may attack an enemy unit as long as they are in a particular position on the board relative to your own. You opponent, however, is on overwatch the entire time. They never attack you directly; rather, they position themselves in a way that they’ll get you if your unit crosses their path, at which point they react to your movements and attack during your turn. Yes, you can move around them, but you’ll get hit if you do.
War Tactics
To start things off, at the dawn of every round, there is a section of the board for each team to position their units. Once you’ve chosen your positions, it’s time to hit start and let the AI take its first turn.
Each unit has two main actions per turn: move and attack. Sometimes you can perform a third action, such as picking up an item or healing someone, but mostly it’s just move and shoot. What’s unique to Artifice is that your movement patterns are different to your attack patterns, so you might have to move diagonally but then you shoot straight, for example. It took me a while to get my head around it and my appalling short-term memory meant I was constantly forgetting where my units could move and having to go back and check again.
Once a round has started properly and your opponent has moved, it’s time to start getting your own units into position. As mentioned, you’ve got to flick between the move and attack options to see what you do, where you can move, and what trade-offs you might have to make. Then it’s a case of committing to actions that put you in a position to either attack that turn or move somewhere advantageous. This often means taking some damage yourself, but you can’t make an omelette without cracking a few proverbial eggs.
The campaign has you visiting multiple regions and battling a variety of fantasy-themed creatures. There are around a dozen playable characters to unlock and you can expand the number of units that you take into battle. Individual missions objectives alternate between defending your back line, making bombing runs, taking out X number of enemies, and defeating and/or capturing a boss. However, despite the variety, they’re all similar in the sense that you must move your team carefully and inflict damage wherever possible. There are also additional objectives to aim for, but what you don’t want to do is burn through your heroes. When one dies you lose a crystal, and you have a limited supply before you run out and your campaign is over and your short-term progress is lost.
Check me out, mate!
Matches in Artifice are kept to a reasonable length, but the pace still feels quite ponderous. There was a slow-mo sequence whenever I killed an enemy (which you can toggle on and off), each unit moves one at a time during the AI’s turn, and my own deliberations took an age as I flicked between my various options. I think if you played enough to learn each character’s moves properly, things would speed up considerably, but it didn’t happen for me in the opening few hours.
My main criticism is that there’s a lack of clear instruction at times. For example, I would pick up loot and have no idea what I’d got or how I could use it. There is a basic tutorial and some tips, but they don’t go far enough in explaining how everything works, which led to some confusing moments. Maybe I missed something, but I couldn’t find any helpful resources in the menus to answer the questions I had.
Overall, the production values are decent, with bright and colourful 3D graphics and plenty of unit variety, each one with solid animations. It looks good, and you get the desired “board game comes to life” feel that the devs are obviously trying to capture. The units on both sides look great, and things can get quite satisfying when you start stringing together moves, pushing and prodding your enemies around the board and into the traps you’ve prepared for them.
Silvine Game Studio has managed to put together a really interesting blend of ingredients here, and the result is a strategy experience that feels vaguely similar yet somewhat original. That said, I think Artifice: War Tactics will prove to be an acquired taste, and while I was able to appreciate the game’s finer points (and there are many) it didn’t really click for me personally and I don’t think I’ll go back for more.
Artifice: War Tactics has just left Early Access on Steam PC. I played the game via access provided by the developers and their publishing friends, so thank you for that!
