Recently there seems to be a resurgence of games that are based around classic card and board game mechanics. Hearthstone and Scrolls are obviously cardgames of course, as is Solitairica – but there are other games that are more board-based that allow you to manoeuvre pieces around a play area. Wartile falls soundly into this second category – it is a norse themed, 3D table-top strategy in which you control figurines to complete objectives around each battle board.
Aesthetically, the Wartile early alpha is spot on. The game is beautiful and highly detailed. Playwood Games have done a superb job in capturing the feel of a physical board game using the Unreal Engine. You control your pieces by simply clack-dragging them to where you want them to be. Each piece has a limited number of spaces that it can move, and then there is a short cool down before you can move it again. All timers are completely independent, so you can see your opponent coming for you and move accordingly.
Move a piece within its range of an opponent (or destructible object, such as fences) and it will automatically start attacking it. Position it next to switches, chests and relics and you can then collect and interact with them. The 3D hexagonal landscape is more than just a pretty face, with undulations providing a tactical advantage for the pieces on higher ground, and path bottlenecks that allow you to tactically position your troops to best effect.
The levels are separated by a map screen, in which you can customise your line-up for the next battle. Figurines can be equipped with better armour and weapons, for example, and you can select which ability card they will take with them to battle. These ability cards can be triggered in the game zone at any time without penalty, but have a long cool down.
Alongside character abilities are global “God” cards that allow you to do various things such as heal your pieces or directly damage your opponents. These powers cost you power-points, which are collected on each level by completing objectives. I initially thought the amount of points available on each level was a little miserly, but actually it’s already quite well balanced as the lack of points forces you to play tactically in order to not need to take too much damage. You find yourself calculating which piece to sacrifice in order to retain your best configuration, and that adds an interesting element to the game and how you play it. You can customise which cards you take with you on the map screen.
As you progress through Wartile, new piece abilities and God cards unlock. At the moment there are not that many different ones available in the game, but this is a pre-alpha and so content is bound to be lacking a bit! Currently there are 3 distinct battle boards in the game, with 1 or 2 levels in each. There is also a multiplayer version, but sadly no-one to play with as yet. If this works in the same way as the single player game though, it could be very interesting!
I have a couple of minor gripes though, first of which is actually the graphics… as I said earlier, they are very detailed – but at the moment there are very few controls governing them, meaning that I struggled to keep a good frame-rate on my (now ageing) machine, having to drop the settings to a generic “low” just to be able to play smoothly. I’m sure that by the time Wartile reaches production there will be the usual raft of detailed settings, but it’s worth mentioning at this point nonetheless.
The other thing I had issues with were the controls… You click-drag your piece to move it, click-drag the map to pan it (or rotate if you right-click), click-drag your God cards to cast them, and sometimes in the heat of battle the game can get confused to exactly which thing you wanted to do. There were a few times in which I needed to move a piece out of harms way but ended up just dragging the whole board to one side… Also the collision detection can prove tricky, meaning that if you have moved a piece behind an object such as a relic, you can then not select it again until you rotate the map just so in order to see it completely. This can be awkward when trying to traverse up narrow paths in the rocks to obtain a tactical advantage.
Overall though, this early alpha of Wartile shows a lot of promise. With a few alterations and (hopefully lots) more content it could be a very cool game!
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