The new campaign features two new units, three new Commanders, and volcanoes. Come watch this horseman get chucked into lava.
The plot is about stealing from fantasy nouns - “plundering riches from the Imperial Palace of Heavensong, Stone Mountain Fort of Felheim, the Celandine Vault of Cherrystone and the Floran’s Iron Roots reserves”. I played all of the original campaign and can’t recall anything about it, apart from that dragons showed up at one point and were a big deal. That’s because I could recruit them, not because they played a huge role in the story. I played Wargroove the same way I played strategy games when I was a kid: amassing deathballs of expensive units and galumphing across the map. The new riflemen look like they’ll be good for that, and the thieves sounds interesting. A lot of Wargroove is about ensuring you have an economic advantage, and the thieves can steal gold from your opponents. I’m not sure what the new Commanders do, though the trailer does include a bit where new hammerman Wulfar chucks a friendly dog into the middle of some pikemen. You can also see “troublemaker twins Errol and Orla” setting swathes of the map on fire, and “the maleficent Vesper” gunking shadow tiles all over the shop. Brendy, RPS in peace, remained fond of the Advance Wars-style tactical action despite its flaws. Here’s how he wound up his Wargroove review: “It’s not so much a spiritual successor as it is a full-bodied recreation of the franchise, with skeleton horsemen instead of tanks. The impeccable Into The Breach already established itself as the true successor to Advance Wars, but I’m perfectly happy to have the old GameBoy cartridge more or less repackaged, even if some of the old dust is trapped in there with it.” You can download the new free stuff from Steam. If you don’t own the base game, you can buy Wargroove from Steam or the Humble Store for £16/$20/€17.
