2001’s Advance Wars is an ideal little recreation: Compact but tactically wealthy, a purposefully restricted however versatile library of models like top-heavy tanks and chonky bombers smashing collectively in rock-paper-scissors shoot-outs. The one wildcard, every commanding officer’s slow-charging heroic energy, can swing the tide of a battle however continues to be comparatively tame—like gaining a pair additional tiles of vary on artillery strikes for one pivotal flip. Give a small workforce of sensible recreation designers the remit to make chess with toy troopers, and I feel that is what they’d give you. And but it’s not my favourite Advance Wars.
My favourite, Advance Wars: Twin Strike for the Nintendo DS, is extra the Chess 2 of technique video games. Extra models, extra powers, combining these wildcard bursts in ways in which drag matches out into dizzying swingy battles like video games of Threat the place somebody’s turning of their bonus playing cards each freaking flip. Overlook excellent: I beloved the bombast of Twin Strike being messily over-the-top, and on a go to to indie studio Space 35’s Tokyo workplace forward of TGS this week I instantly clocked that its new entry within the Tiny Steel sequence takes after my one real love.
Six years after Tiny Steel: Full Steel Rumble, the confusingly named Tiny Steel 2 places you accountable for two factions directly so you possibly can mix their strengths. Even higher, now you can do it in co-op, with one participant taking command of every workforce.
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The extra instantly apparent improve in Tiny Steel 2 if you happen to’re not the precise sort of weirdo nonetheless carrying a torch for Twin Strike 20 years later is that it appears a lot, a lot nicer than the primary couple video games, which traded out Advance Wars’ charming 2D type for a swag-less low poly 3D. Tiny Steel 2 is much less Unity asset retailer and extra comedian booky. It is lacking the polished sheen of a 2025 Nintendo recreation, however fashionable sufficient to make a pleasant first impression.
Tactically it appears like there is a bit extra occurring right here too. The basics borrowed wholesale from Advance Wars are all nonetheless right here: you seize buildings with infantry to earn sources and manufacture new troops; tanks can brush off machine gun hearth however are vulnerable to a heavy blast of artillery; submarines are demise for different ships although simple to sink as soon as they break the floor. However a spotlight hearth mechanic makes the order of your orders matter way more.
At first I merrily threw my troops into the fray separately, every assault on an enemy incomes them a little bit of damaging retaliatory hearth. Then I spotted I may give a pair weaker models a command to deal with an enemy and await a mixed strike, in order that once I rolled in with a heavy mech to set off the team-up assault the enemy could be toast earlier than it may hit again.
Tiny Steel 2 additionally permits you to select what course models are dealing with and makes assaults from the perimeters or rear doubtlessly simpler, although the additional step this provides to controlling every unit—and the variety of attainable assaults you need to attempt on an enemy to seek out the optimum one—is perhaps extra fiddly than this type of gentle technique recreation actually advantages from. The UI is already working exhausting to convey strengths and weaknesses for every unit in opposition to different varieties, however some form of visible entrance/again/facet armor ranking would reduce out among the tedium of fretting over each transfer.
The a lot nicer artwork and the promise of co-op team-ups that lean into melding the commander powers of every are extra interesting to me than these niggles are regarding, although. Even with Nintendo just lately returning to the Advance Battle sequence for the primary time in many years within the type of a cute however fairly restricted remake, this stays an oddly uncommon type of snackable technique recreation. Tiny Steel 2 appears to have sufficient concepts of its personal to lastly assist propel it out of “Now we have Advance Wars at dwelling” territory.
It is on Steam now, and out someday subsequent 12 months.
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