Summary
The colony-sim genre is saturated withdeeply complex titlespacked with mechanics that focus on resource management and base-building. Building and expanding a base, recruiting new members to the colony, and scavenging for resources tend to be the mechanical focus of these games.
Despite the fact that many colony-sims use enemy raids as an incentive to seek out more resources and build better colonies, deep/engaging combat is somewhat of a rarity in the genre. However, there are a handful of titles that include rewarding, tactical combat systems.
7Ascent Of Ashes
Special Mention
This unreleased colony-sim takes heavy inspiration from games such asRimWorldbut with a stronger focus on tactical,real-time-with-pause, squad-based combat. In the game, players build, manage, and expand their colony of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world but can also send their survivors out on dangerous expeditions.
These combat-heavy expeditions are deeply tactical, with much of the game’s combat focusing around tactical positioning and well-organized firing lines.Ascent Of Ashesis being developed by the team behindRimWorld’s Combat Extended mod, and looks to be a promising colony-sim.
6Trailblazers: Into The March
Putting players in control of a colony on board a massive, customizable landship,Trailblazers: Into The Marchis a unique combination of the rogue-lite and colony-sim genres. Though currently unreleased,Trailblazers: Into The Marchpromises to offer gameplay that blends resource management and strategy with tactical combat.
Combat inTrailblazers: Into The Marchis set to feature dramatic battles between landships, as well as a morale system that impacts the performance of colony members in battle. For fans ofthe rogue-lite structureand colony-sims alike,Trailblazers: Into The Marchlooks to be a promising title.
5Songs Of Syx
A City-Sized Colony-Sim With Large Scale Battles
This large-scale combination of the colony-sim and city-building genres tasks players with managing and defending a growing city. Along the way, players will need to amass and manage their army, as well as the city itself.
DespiteSongs Of Syxnot being a massively combat-focused game,its large-scaleresults in some truly dramatic battles. These battles can feature thousands of units at a time, leading to some frequently entertaining and satisfying combat encounters that are somewhat reminiscent of theTotal Wargames. However, these encounters can get repetitive after a while.
Rise To Ruinsis a unique combination of colony-sims such asRimWorld,God-games such asBlack And White, and the tower defense genre. As a result, it offers an experience that’s extremely distinctive, focusing around base building and defense against hordes of enemies.
Despite focusing more on its base defense elements,Rise To Ruinsdoes task players with the management of their civilians; each civilian requires food and water, and these civilians are important as they can be used to perform a variety of tasks. Much of the game’s combat is based around tower defense mechanics but features some real-time strategy elements that help to shake things up.
RimWorldis one ofthe best colony simsavailable on Steam, with a great deal of replay value even without its extensive amounts of DLC.RimWorldisn’t always a combat-heavy experience, but each combat encounter can be extremely strategic, especially as the game progresses.
Much of a player’s success inRimWorld’scombat comes down to how well they set up their base and its defenses. Sandbags, choke-points, traps, and kill-boxes all play important parts inRimWorld’s combat. For the most part, though, players will need to tactically position their fighters and ensure that each of them has the right equipment for their particular set of skills.
Cult Of The Lambisn’t a straight-up colony-sim, offering an experience that’s more of a hybrid between the colony-sim and action rogue-like genres with a littleAnimal Crossingthrown in for good measure.Cult Of The Lambis a tremendously popular indie hit, and for good reason: its balance between action-packed combat and colony management is well-tuned, offering two very different flavors of gameplay.
The combat ofCult Of The Lambis built around a dungeon-crawling structure that has playershacking and slashingthrough enemies in a variety of rooms, often leading up to a climactic boss fight. The variety of weapons and powers, as well as the massively helpful dodge roll, help to keep combat engaging throughout each crawl throughCult Of The Lamb’sstylized dungeons.
Kenshiis an incredibly deep, open-world sandbox RPG with an abundance of systems and a variety of things to do.Kenshi’sbiggest selling point is its expansive world and the freedom that it offers players, but its combat system is also surprisingly complex.
Kenshifeatures party-based mechanics, and although players can choose to go it alone, party members are extremely important to the player’s chances of survival. Gathering a balanced composition of party members and training the right skills, as well as acquiring good equipment, are all important aspects ofKenshi’scombat. However, careful positioning and target priority, as well as cautious threat assessment, are often the deal-breakers between a successful battle and bleeding out in the sand.
