Summary
Strategy games cover a wide variety of games on the market over various sub-genres, but one thing that many of them have in common is their complexity and general inaccessibility, especially with indie titles.
RELATED:The Best RTS Games To Play If You Love Starcraft
However, some strategy games either go to great lengths to make themselves beginner-friendly or are simply accessible and easy to learn. Due to the sheer amount of variations in the strategy game genre, this list aims to provide a broad selection of strategy games, all of which are beginner-friendly in one way or another.
8Othercide
This game takes place ina grim-dark fantasy settingwith a bleak story and aesthetic that’spredominantly black-and-white. While this aesthetic might not be for everyone,Othercide’s rogue-lite mechanics make its otherwise unforgiving gameplay a lot more friendly to beginners.
InOthercide, players control a small squad of units battling against a variety of distinct and gruesome enemies, managing their actions on a dynamic timeline, which is the only mechanic that may trip some beginners up at first. Players will have to sacrifice their own units to heal others, making gameplay a little unforgiving, but the game’s clear and minimal UI, as well as its meta-progression system that allows players to start new runs with an advantage, makes up for the game’s harshness.
7The Banner Saga
This beautifully visualized game is a narrative-driven experience interspersed with tactical turn-based combat that can sometimes feel like a puzzle. The game features a lot of player choice and consequence, and although its combat can be unforgiving, its mechanics are easy to learn.
The Banner Saga’s carefully constructed atmosphere and story, and how the player interacts with the narrative, raise the stakes of combat by granting the player strong context and motive, which makes playing through the game’s combat more intense and enjoyable despite some frustrating encounters.
6For The King
This strategy RPG takes elements from the world of tabletop games with its dice-rolling combat and over-world travel.For The Kingcombines these tabletop elements withrogue-like elements to create a unique and accessible RPGwith both single-player and cooperative play.
RELATED:Video Games That Would Make Amazing Board Games
InFor The King, players travel across procedurally generated maps to complete quests, gather loot, and level up as they battle through various combat encounters. While the game’s systems are fairly beginner-friendly, there’sa hefty amount of RNGin the gameplay that might frustrate some players.
5Wildermyth
AlthoughWildermythis predominantly a narratively-driven party-based RPG that innovates with player choice and procedurally generated stories, it also features an extremely accessible, beginner-friendly combat system with multiple difficulty settings that allow players to strategize without being bogged down by too many systems and micromanagement.
Wildermyth’scombat is turn-based and tactical, focusing on using each of the controllable characters in tandem; players will have to position their characters carefully, take advantage of flanking and walling mechanics, and make the most out of combat abilities to succeed. Although characters can permanently die inWildermyth, the game features a mechanic that allows characters to “fall back” and take a permanent injury instead or let them die to deal massive damage to their attacker.
4Northgard
This more traditional strategy game takes inspiration from games likeCivilizationandWarcraft 3to create a unique and accessible blend of strategy, resource management, and territory control with a simple but effective aesthetic andViking theme.
InNorthgard, players take control of a clan of Vikings, assigning them to various tasks and discovering new territory to conquer. The game features a lot more resource management and territory control than other games on this list, but the game’s general lack of micromanagement makes it fairly accessible to newcomers.
3Into The Breach
This release from the developers ofFTLis a turn-based strategy game with a focus on tactics and puzzle elements.Into The Breachis unique in the fact that it gives players all the information it has to offer, including what enemies are going to do on their turn and the exact order in which they’re going to do it. This, combined with the fact that the game offers a variety of different objectives other than just killing enemies, turns the game’s missions into tactical puzzles.
RELATED:Turn-Based Tactics Games That Are Perfect For Newcomers To The Genre
What makesInto The Breachbeginner-friendly is itseasy-to-learn/hard-to-mastermechanics, a rogue-lite structure that allows players to jump in and out, and “undo”/“reset turn” mechanics that allow players to experiment with different strategies every mission.
2Tooth And Tail
Based around warring factions of anthropomorphized creatures,Tooth And Tailis a real-time strategy game with local and online multiplayer and a single-player campaign to play through. The game’s matches are designed to be quick and fast-paced, making it easy to pick up and play and highly accessible for newcomers to the strategy genre.
For an RTS,Tooth And Tailmanages to be simple and easy to play while remaining strategic, and it does this by keeping the economy management and base-building of RTS games while removing most of the micromanagement; instead, players can rally their troops to their controllable leader and direct them around the battlefield, leading to broad and sweeping strategic decisions that lead to large and chaotic battles, rather than getting bogged down in the minutiae.
1Thronefall
AlthoughThronefallis in Steam Early Access at the time of writing, it is already a tremendously polished experience with a good amount of content.Thronefalldistills the gameplay of a traditional RTS and combines it with tower defense games to create an accessible and easy-to-learn experience that’s arguably the perfect introduction to strategic experiences in video games.
InThronefall, players build a base made up of economy buildings, defenses, and unit-spawning buildings to defend from a variety of enemy waves. Players have control of a character that has an automatic attack and a unique ability for the player to activate.Thronefalldoesn’t task players with lots of micromanagement, instead allowing them to position units in strategic positions. A lot of the strategy inThronefallcomes from economy management, good preparation, and unit positioning, allowing for a simple but deep experience. Furthermore, the game has various difficulty modifiers for those who want to push themselves a little harder.
