Unlike From the Depths, I really enjoy Stormworks. On the whole, I find it mildly amusing, but there's not much to do beyond building ships, and that doesn't really grab my attention.įrom the Depths, but with rescue missions and all types of vehicles. There's a ton of potential, but building complicated things takes a lot of work, and I don't have the patience for it. You build the ship block-by-block, with hull, engines, guns, steering, sensors and so on. While all of those operate on a fairly high level, the sort of thing that the Preliminary Design group would do, this is far more in the weeds. The upside is that it's completely free, so definitely worth a try if I've made it sound interesting.Ī shipbuilding game, but not in the same way as the previous three. I like it enough to have written a 14-part tutorial, although it's a very specific taste. It's frighteningly deep, and the shipbuilder is a particular gem, as you have control over all elements from the basic technologies to the components like engines, weapons and sensors, to the final vessels that you design, build, and fight. You control a civilization venturing out into the cosmos, doing everything from setting research priorities to ordering specific ships about. Not strictly a naval game, but naval-esq enough to feature here, particularly given the movement model. Overall, seems intended to appeal to World of Warships players who want to design ships, and not to serious geeks. The campaign mode, though available, is still kind of a mess. The same basic concept as RTW2, but with much better graphics and a shallower and more cluttered shipbuilder. If you only get one game here, make it this one, which is available on Steam.

It does an excellent job showing the information limits of 20th-century naval warfare, and is like the video game version of a Norman Friedman book. The sequel to RTW2, and an all-around better game, even leaving aside the extension of the period to 1890-1970. They've also made a positive change by ditching their homegrown DRM, if you need one more reason to buy the game. I will say that other games by the same developer (except RTW1, which was RTW2 but without airplanes and running 1900-1920) seem to be focused on recreating historical battles, and I don't like their ship combat engine enough to recommend them. Despite the problems, the whole loop is amazing, and I highly recommend it. There's an upcoming DLC which promises to fix some of that, and I will report back as soon as it's out. The other aspects are less satisfactory, with the ship combat being merely OK and the shallowness of the strategic aspects being at times deeply frustrating. The high point of the game is the ship designer, as it's quite versatile and does a good job of capturing the flavor of the sorts of decisions real designers have to deal with, without overwhelming you with detail. It's a game set in the period 1900-1950 where you pick a country, design and build ships, and then fight them. RTW2 shouldn't be unfamiliar to long-time readers here, given that we had a group game running for over a year. All of these are things I've played, although a few are more broadly strategic or naval-adjacent, as I chose to cast a wide net. Coming off my review of Ultimate Admiral - Dreadnoughts, I thought it was worth taking a look at the wider world of naval video games.

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