Strategy games

Strategy games are about the decisions you make before anything happens, and about living with them afterwards. They reward planning, reading a system for its underlying rules, and a willingness to lose several times while working out what the game is actually asking of you.

Turn-based and real-time

Turn-based strategy gives you as long as you want to think, which makes it forgiving of interruption — you can stop mid-turn and return the next day. Tactics games narrow the scope to a single battle with positioning and initiative at the centre. Real-time strategy adds pressure and asks you to divide your attention, which is harder and produces a very different kind of tension.

Tower defence, 4X and auto-battlers

Several sub-genres thrive in independent hands. Tower defence turns strategy into a spatial puzzle with a clear feedback loop: place, watch, adjust. 4X games trade session length for depth. Auto-battlers move all the decision-making into a preparation phase and hand the outcome to the simulation, making each round short enough to fit into a break.

What to expect

Indie strategy games tend to be narrower and sharper than their commercial equivalents. Rather than a hundred units you might get twelve that interact in genuinely interesting ways — usually a feature, since a small legible system you can hold in your head produces better decisions than a large opaque one.

Expect to lose your first run. Most of these games assume the first attempt is how you learn the rules, and are short enough that starting again is not a punishment. Each listing shows the platforms it supports and links you to where you can get it.