"We didn't need dialogue, we had *faces*!"
Well, there's five dollars wasted.
When Elemental: War of Magic first came out, I was amused at its "cloth map" graphics complete with figurines on pedestals, and concluded: "The whole thing seems to be more of a result of a few designers'
combined nostalgia for the glory days of D&D, M:tG and Settlers of
Catan." Nevertheless it boasted enough features to qualify as a good (not great) game in its own right, at least after getting unceremoniously truncated into Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes.
The intervening decade saw the spread of neo-retro pixelation and other forms of mindless nostalgia, and while this brought about a latent and much-welcome resurgence of more complex, thoughtful genres like turn-based strategy/roleplaying it also spawned quite a few superficial copycats abusing niche audiences' predilections. Wartile falls into that second category.
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| Don't you want the loot? Everybody wants loot. |
It doesn't fall too far, mind you. As yet another indie squad-based tactical on a hex grid, it provides the requisite core mechanics like zones of control, armor and damage juggling and a few status effects competently enough. And that's about all it provides. 3-4 units using one special ability each in between constantly autoattacking, with occasional single-use powerups. That's all you get within each actual mission.
Development time instead sank into... feels.
Units and objects are portrayed as plastic "figurines" on flat bases. Maps pointedly show their edges like tabletop game boards. Abilities are portrayed as cards. Units are moved by click-dragging each one individually to mimic manipulating tabletop piece movement (you can have your whole squad follow your currently selected unit (instead of normal group-move) but even the simplest obstacle will have them playing Theseus and the Minotaur.) Even your menu screen's arranged like physical boxes for figurines and cards.
Granted I knew most of this going in. Wartile openly advertises itself as imitating tabletop trappings. In fact I halfheartedly blew five bucks on it specifically for how thoroughly it manifests the past decade's hipster idiocy afflicting the indie PC game scene, and I wanted something to bitch at. Surprised it doesn't feature rolling dice animations to round out its tabletop cliches like another game I criticized:
"There you have Solasta's biggest problem: it doesn't focus on good
content per se but on fetishizing the hobby, the form devoid of content,
the "feels" of sitting in front of a vinyl placemat rolling dice, in
keeping with your party's banter sounding like a bunch of socializing
apes stuffing their faces with pizza around a dinette set."
More and more small developers (see Slay the Spire for card games) appear to be banking on nothing but this ginned-up fetish for the superficialities of tabletop games, for dice, painted figurines and decks of cards. Scratch even slightly beneath that pretence of rebelling against computers' takeover of the word "gamer" and you'll find these rebels' posturing as hollow as movie actors' revulsion against "talkies" in 1930.
Wartile's music sounds occasionally gripping... for a few bars... until you realize it's just spamming Dies Irae at you.
It has you looting redundant armor segments merely adding to the same stat, a flaw even D&D outgrew, all for the joy of looting repetitive treasure chests, though much as in D:OS 2 your gear is strictly determined by your linear advancement through the campaign and the constant clicking on treasure chests merely fills the perceived need for gambling addiction to retain player interest.
It boasts a campaign of Norse mythology which on closer inspection amounts to repeating half a dozen terms like "jarl" and "seidr" and fighting standard-issue walking skeletons termed draugr.
As its one practical selling point it imitates Northgard in using game tiles in real-time. But what worked marginally well for harvestable territories is merely annoying for toe-to-toe combat, making you constantly mash the "slow time" button as you constantly shuffle units around to maintain the same flanking positions in the absence disengagement attacks.
The DIY voice acting ain't winnin' no awards.
Overall, you could get more complex gameplay in a dozen randomized combats of Planetfall with more artistic creativity to boot. How long before the nostalgic fifty-somethings merely retire to their rocking chairs to gripe about how they don't make 'em like they used to, and the twenty-something hipsters jump on the next "retro" bandwagon? Boomboxes maybe? Or Thundarr the Barbarian? Ooooh, ooooh, I know, let's bring back disco yet again!
These little diorama board nostalgia trips aren't games. They're a senile tantrum. You won't be up there again, Norma.
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P.S.: All the above dovetails nicely with my comments on Hellslave last week. Though Hellslave's production values, basic mechanics and workmanship were inferior, it nonetheless built something all its own on them, whereas Wartile sells downright reactionary complacency.
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