My favorite RTS games continue to be smaller, squad based titles. Micro managing dozens of units and worrying about apm are just not appealing. Line War is something new to me in the strategy game genre. It’s a futuristic RTS where you construct robots and drones to fight wars, giving them only the most basic directions. It’s almost like an auto-battler RTS. I first played the Line War demo during the 2022 Steam Next fest and really enjoyed it. Thankfully Studio Centurion fulfilled my request for some keys at launch, so I was able to check out the full release version.

Line War is developed and published by Studio Centurion and retails for $19.99, though the price is set to rise with new features. Gameplay is very straightforward, you and your opponent start by selecting from thousands of maps. Next, you both blind pick starting places on the map keeping in mind terrain and resources. Finally, the war begins, simply build factories based on what units you want to deploy, and draw lines to where you want them to go. They will automatically engage with the enemy, no micro or geometry mastering required. These lines can be customized to only affect specific units. For example, Let’s say you want your helicopters to support an infantry push, but you want bombers to attack a nearby enemy island. Draw one line to the battle with only helicopters selected, and draw another line to the island with only bombers selected. It’s an incredibly intuitive process.

You also have buildings that focus on your economy. Money, resource extraction, power generation, and power storage. Money buys everything, and power keeps the higher end weapons going. These are spread over land and sea, so there are generally security concerns for the entirety of your infrastructure.

There are a few things that I will mention as drawbacks for Line War in its current form. It is strictly a multiplayer game, so unless you want to 1v1 yourself, be prepared to come with friends or wait in queues. I also did find the current implementation of line drawing memory inconvenient. When drawing lines, it defaults to the last line you drew. This is incredibly problematic when switching from infantry lines to air or sea lines. I wish all lines started from some kind of default or empty. It was exceedingly rare to go from needing to draw the same type of line twice. I do think the $19.99 price tag is a big high for a single mode multiplayer only game. A singleplayer campaign or vs AI skirmish mode would be a game changer. They do have plans to develop AI in their roadmap, but no indication of how soon has been given. Keeping queues active and skill-matched seems like it could become difficult.

What I like most about Line War is that it opens up the different theatres of war. Naval combat feels very fun, almost like the good old Warcraft II naval RTS battles. The air units are my far and away favorite, it is really satisfying to watch them work. I like how simple it is to manage units with the lines. It’s super easy to adapt your strategy, and it frees you up to manage other aspects of the game like watching the map or economy. The visuals are also really nice too, all the units have a great stylized modern/sci fi aesthetic. The red versus blue coloring gives a nice contrast so units don’t get lost in terrain features or in big battles. They have 2v2 and 3v3 modes coming later this year, as well as an amazing looking aircraft carrier unit I cannot WAIT to field.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoy the gameplay and mechanics in Line War. It feels different enough from other RTS games to feel like something new. There are a lot of nice features that combine to make it stand out as a strategy game. You can paradrop commandos from cargo planes, build submarines to give the naval component a lot of depth (pun intended), and terrain concerns that slow down major advances or reinforcements. Each map is a full theater of war simulation. Line War is somewhere between traditional base-building RTS games and Grand Strategy/4x titles, which is a sweet spot for me.