Space War Arena

Genre: Strategy

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Space War Arena is a real-time Strategy game that has nothing to do with the classic game Spacewar. Rather, players control one of two warring space stations deploying units to attack and defend against the other.

Players are given access to only five of the types of units they can create, and others get slotted in when you deploy a unit, giving you reason to cycle through the unit types as you play. Another element of the strategy here is resource management, as every resource has a cost in energy to produce.

Altogether, this works out to be a pretty interesting take on the real-time strategy genre. It’s not really a Tower Defense game, since most units don’t remain where you place them and you’re playing both defensively and offensively. However, at the same time, it’s not like most RTS games in that you do not control units directly, and your main concern is what you purchase, where you place it, and how much it costs.

It’s a pretty satisfying setup, but it does have its flaws. Firstly, limiting just what players can build from their arsenal cuts down on the potential strategy of the game significantly, as you can’t focus on, say, building up your defenses if you don’t happen to get any defensive units in your build queue at a given time. Also, stationary units seem to inexplicably have a limited life span regardless of whether or not they’re taking damage, limiting players’ capacity to build up a defensive perimeter before striking out with an attack. These limits on players’ strategy in a strategy game are frustrating and counter-productive, limiting the enjoyment of what is otherwise a fantastic and original take on the genre.

As for the presentation, everything here is presented cleanly, and it’s mostly not too difficult to distinguish different ships from one another. There’s nothing truly spectacular here, but nothing terrible either. It works.

As a whole, Space War Arena is a strategy game with a really unique spin on the formula, depicting space armada battles from the perspective of the one deploying the units but not commanding them in battle. There’s some good gameplay here, but unfortunately some of the design decisions also restrict players’ strategic utility, which really limits this game’s potential.

tl;dr – Space War Arena is a strategy game where players command one of a pair of dueling space stations commanding an armada of ships to attack and defend against the other. It’s a great concept with a really original approach to the genre, but unfortunately players are limited by some frustrating design decisions that limit their strategic options.

Grade: B-

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