![]() ![]() These days, you can emulate Sim City 2000 on DOS right in your browser. The music and sound effects are absolutely iconic and the natural disasters and challenge modes are weirdly hilarious. Randomly generated maps provide tons of replayability and the game is very forgiving for those who simply want to have a chill time. I still prefer it to the later Sim City installments – there’s just something so charming about Sim City 2000 that is seldom replicated. One of the first video games I got seriously addicted to. It’s impressive how all these different mechanics blend together in The Riftbreaker without feeling overwhelming. The late game can get stressful, for sure, but if you’re happy to learn by failing a few times first then achieving objectives is incredibly rewarding. It all sounds a bit intense for a ‘casual’ strategy game, right? Well, the story mode really holds your hand as the difficulty is cranked up so it’s surprisingly easy to get up to speed. The Riftbreaker is a pretty damn great execution of what, on paper, seems like an overly ambitious conflation of several different genres.Ĭlassic elements of real-time strategy like base building and resource collection are added to by tower defense style gameplay, top-down shooter action as well as an RPG-like crafting and upgrades system. The gameplay is relatively slow for an RTS which only makes it more friendly to the casual player.Ĭheck it out – there’s literally nothing to lose. There are more than 100 buildings and over 200 different units plus several different game modes beyond the classic skirmish format (including a survival mode and a battle royale-style mode). War Selection is classic base building, resource collection, and combat real-time strategy with surprising depth for a free game. Free and free-to-play games are a bit hit and miss – War Selection is definitely a hit. There are a huge number of good free indie games on Steam, including piles of strategy games. Well worth a try even if turn-based strategy isn’t usually your thing. Grim-dark fantasy is quite a hard style to get right in my opinion but the writing and atmosphere in this game are absolutely on point. It seems super difficult at first, but learn the glyphs and mechanics and you’ll find it actually gets easier as the game progresses. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this. I like turn-based strategy on Game Boy Advanced, but often struggle to get into this genre on PC (outside classics like Civ 5). Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus is a turn-based strategy game. I may have painted a few models back in the day but I’ve never rolled dice in anger, know nothing about the Warhammer 40,000 lore and I still really enjoyed this one. If you’ve never been into Warhammer, don’t be put off by the fact that this is a Warhammer game. Tons of active players means there are thriving online communities for multiplayer gameplay as well as mod development. Other than that, the art style and simplicity of play are, for me, the two main things that make Civ 5 more appealing for a casual player than Civ 6. Civilization 5Īnother old game that, like AoE 2, continues to pull in an impressive number of players today despite several sequels having been released. I think it’s one of the best casual turn-based strategy games of all time.Ĭivilization 6 is arguably more friendly to the absolute beginner, but Civ 5 is nevertheless a much easier game to get stuck into than the first four entries in the series. If you’ve played loads of Age of Empires, go back and play some more AoE 2. If you’ve never played Age of Empires, my recommendation would be to start with this one. You can ramp the difficulty up to hone your chops for multiplayer if you like (if you’re new to online PvP, these tips for how to get better at RTS games should help), but even the PVP lobbies have plenty of casual servers for less intense competitive play. The music is amazing, the speed is amazing, and the graphics and scaling are perfect. The memorable single-player campaign – rooted in real historical events – is super approachable even for the freshest of newcomers to RTS. RTS is not dead: AoE 2 is a timeless classic that has enduring appeal not only among casual gamers but also in esports. The game that got me into RTS and, actually, gaming in general. (Disclaimer: There are obviously too many good strategy games to fit into a single article – the ones I have included are simply my favorites for casual sessions.) Casual strategy games for PC Age of Empires II Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (PC, PS5, Xbox).Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town. ![]() The best casual strategy games (overall). ![]()
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