REDCON (v2.2.0)

Artillery duels become tense tactical puzzles in a soot-stained alternate future where the First World War never truly ends. REDCON places you in command of an imperial fortress, trading salvos with the breakaway state of Krux across a campaign built around brutal sieges and failing machinery. Its steampunk war machine aesthetic mixes colossal cannons, iron bunkers, gas-mask troops, and constant explosions into a grim but wonderfully readable battlefield. Rather than controlling individual soldiers directly, you act as a commander who decides which enemy systems must be destroyed before your own fortress collapses.

Each battle revolves around selecting targets, managing a limited crew, and keeping crucial rooms online under fire. Guns need operators, damaged systems need repairs, fires spread if ignored, and boarding parties can force you to divert soldiers from their posts to defend the interior. Active Pause lets you stop the action to queue orders, redirect weapons, assign repairs, or coordinate an assault, making the real-time pressure accessible without removing the need for fast priorities. Victories unlock new weapons, support facilities, fortress blueprints, medals, and perks, while equipment placement turns every stronghold into a customizable loadout with its own strengths and vulnerabilities.

The best moments come from dismantling an opponent piece by piece: knock out its power supply, silence its artillery, breach its defenses, then send troops through the opening before it recovers. REDCON has the immediate clarity of a side-view strategy game but demands the system targeting and crisis management associated with FTL, with a more focused mission structure and far more emphasis on bombardment. Its campaign is largely linear, yet differing fortress designs and weapon combinations encourage experimentation, especially when later battles punish careless layouts. Players who enjoy pausable real-time tactics, compact strategy missions, and the satisfaction of turning a damaged bunker into a functioning war engine should find plenty to like; veterans of FTL and Kingdom: Two Crowns-style pressure management are particularly well served.